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Women In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

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When I first began to read and analyze” The story of an Hour”, Mrs. Mallard seemed to be an older woman and as we were informed in the very first line, Mrs. Mallard was troubled with a heart issue. As I furthered continued to read, I discovered she was a young woman and it through me for a loop. I think that Chopin is showing us a social situation of the times when women feels as prisoner in a marriage. We(women) all has dreams of becoming a wife to our knight and shining honor but once we get “our knight and shining honor”, it isn’t always what we have dreamed of. Kate Chopin 's, "The Story of an Hour," is a very written short piece of fiction. The length of this short story has no power compared the depth of it. "The Story of an Hour" has …show more content…

Because of the attitude towards women in the society of that day, many women possessed strength that they were never allowed to use. Chopin implies that this strength is repressed when she describes Mrs. Mallard as having a face "whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength" (Page 202). Mrs. Mallard is a strong woman who immediately begins to take her life into her own hands and starts to make decisions and plans for her future. Many women would not have had the strength to deal with these new ideas and emotions but would have simply allowed another man to take control of their life. Women should not only be powerful but also beautiful and independent. Women in the eighteenth century were portrayed as servants did not have any say in anything just like the story of an hour by Kate Chopin, where even in a good marriage you could not do the things you wanted to do. In the eighteenth century, Women were portrayed as powerless humans who were beneath the men because men were powerful everything was given to them once they became men and wife. According to Hicks, Jennifer “Divorce was quite rare in the 1800s and if one was to occur, men were automatically given legal control of all property and children”, In the story of an hour Mrs. Mallard who was portrayed as weak because of her heart problems was told that her husband had died from a railroad

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