...“The story of an hour” The short story ”The story of an hour” written by Kate Chopin, is a story about a woman called Mrs. Mallard, she is told by her sister Josephine, that her husband died in a train accident. The way she reacted in front of her sister was very dramatic, but when she was by herself in her room she was not being sad, miserable or devastated, but in a way very relived. In the text we follow Mrs. Mallard’s feelings, about herself and her husband. Kate Chopin wrote “ The story of an hour “ in 1894, which was in a time period, were the women had no rights. In 1894 the gender roles were deadlocked; the women was suppressed by their husband, in family relationship, and in the political and legal sense. The husband had the final say, in all decisions. It was him who ruled over the family’s finances, and decided where the family should live. The woman took care of the house, the children, and was responsible for the housekeeping. The man’s role was to support his family. The woman’s role was to give birth, take care of the home, and assist the husband. At the time the male gender role was portrayed as the strong, powerful, deciding and intelligent gender. Where as the woman, was portrayed as weak, without influence, insensible and the husband’s subordinate (placed under the man). Louise Mallard is a strong, powerful, intelligent and independent woman. She knows how she should behave in front of her husband, family and society. But how she feels and think, is anything...
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...through your consciousness. In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, we see this scenario played out in a woman’s life during one emotion-filled hour. Louise Mallard is a woman afflicted with heart problems who, upon hearing the unfortunate news of her husband’s death, is thrust into a moment in time when the life she has come to know suddenly begins to take on a whole new meaning. Interwoven in this timeless tale are themes of self-assertion, oppression, repression, and freedom at a time when woman were anything but. Through her use of irony, symbolism, suspense, and descriptive narratives, Chopin masterfully captures the essence of one woman’s plight in “The Story of an Hour”. The use of irony is an effective literary tool Chopin uses throughout her story to keep the audience cognitive of the contradictions inherent in people and situations. Early on, we see an example of situational irony when we are told Louise Mallard, after being informed of her husband’s death, “Did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzing inability to accept its significance” (215). We are further told, “She wept at once, with wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms” (215). Louise appeared to everyone in the house to be extremely sad and goes upstairs to be alone in her room. Normally, this is a very typical reaction after having lost a loved one. However, once Mrs. Mallard is alone, she is not saddened by the passing of Mr. Mallard but rather relieved: “She saw beyond...
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...“The Story of an Hour” is a short story, written by Kate Chopin, which conveys the heavy use of irony and symbolism to express the feelings of the main character, Louise Mallard, as she deals with the sudden loss of her husband. Published in 1894, “The Story of an Hour” portrays a young woman who has learned of the death of her husband and is then overcome with a series of different emotions as the story progresses (Chopin). Evident in the story, the symbols portray a wide array of meaning as it describes the feeling of freedom that overcomes Louise as she begins to realize that the death of her husband is more of a blessing than a tragedy. Furthermore, the feelings that Louise begins to feel after she has come to her realization are apparent through the...
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...“The Story of the Hour’ by Kate Chopin is story about a young women who has been married to a man for some time when she finds out he was killed in a work accident. She almost has the sensation of being free before her husband walks through the door, unhurt and alive, only to kill the young woman upon sight. Being taken out of context it can be presumed that the young woman's husband was a very unfriendly man and not a good husband. This young woman has a moment in time where she is free from her husband and appears to become a renewed person for a brief time. I believe that the young woman has been freed from the husband only to regain the innocence she once had but her husband had taken away from her and continued to do so. Innocence is...
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...“Reading a story, a poem, or a play introduces you to an imaginary world. You are pulled away from a living, breathing world into one that was created in the mind of the author. Its situations and experiences may resemble ones you are familiar with; many of them may even be based in part on real situations, but they are imaginary–shaped by the imagination of the person who created the story, poem, or play you are reading (R. Wayne Clugston, 2010)”. This first week in my literature class has been amazing. I never knew that literature is understanding other people’s points of view. In understanding the concept of different readings I have learned that there are many different ways to analyze a story or poem. As I begin to write this paper I will chose Kate Chopin’s, The Story of an hour. I believe there are several basic literary terms such as: symbolism, metaphors, irony, similies and personification. I will focus this paper on the symbolism that I see. The Story of an hour captured my interest because of the way the Mrs. Mallard was handling the news of the death of her husband. She was very saddened by the news, but yet I felt as though she was somewhat relieved. As a divorced mother of two children, I believe I could relate with Mrs. Mallard in the sense of being devastated at the loss of my marriage but also I felt relief that I could be my own person again and I could control what I did and how I lived my life. Mrs. Mallard went through the grieving process...
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... “The story of an hour” is a short story written by Kate Chopin. According to Wikipedia, she was born Katherine O’Flaherty on February 8, 1850, in St. Louis, Missouri. She was an American author of short stories and novels. She is now considered by some to have been a forerunner of feminist authors of the 20th century. “The story of an hour” was written on April 19, 1894 but was originally published in Vogue on December 6, 1894 as “The Dream of an Hour”. It was first reprinted in St. Louis Life on January 5, 1895 as “The story of an Hour”. The reason behind the title of the short story is because the whole story is within an hour. The structure Chopin chose for the story fits the subject perfectly. The story is short, made up of a series of short paragraphs, many of which consist of just two or three sentences. Likewise, the story only covers only an hour of in Louise’s life. It starts with the wife Louise Mallard finding about the death of her husband Mr. Brently Mallard. She reacts with obvious grieving stages, but what’s odd about her reaction is once she’s upstairs by herself and she starts thinking, Louise Mallard begins to feel an unexpected sense of exhilaration. She felt a sense of freedom, a sense of Independence. At the end of the story Mr. Brently Mallard walks in and she dies. Doctors said she died because of the happiness she felt by seeing him. Kate Chopins’ short story, “The story of an hour,” makes the statement that humans...
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...American author, Kate Chopin, in her narrative short story, "The Story of an Hour," recounts the story of an hour in the life of Mrs. Louise Mallard, a young woman "with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength" (Chopin, 605). Chopin's purpose for writing this short story is to address the lack of independence and social status that was an everyday part of life for married women living in the Victorian era. She adopts a sympathetic tone in order to appeal to similar feelings and experiences in her female readers. In 1870, Kate married Oscar Chopin, a Louisiana businessman of French-Creole descent. In New Orleans, where Chopin and her husband lived until 1879, she was among Southern high society. Proper Southern women of this time were expected to be submissive, compliant and stoic. Coming from a long line of Southern females, I know this to be true. The society of this era viewed the altruistic wife, reliant on her husband and devoted to her children, as the feminine ideal. Chopin's forward-thinking literary works of the late nineteenth century were not considered socially acceptable, so it wasn't until the 1960s or 1970s that she became "an integral part of the evolution of feminism" (katechopin.org). Chopin begins "The Story of an Hour" with an instant, essential revelation of the story's pinnacle. Readers learn in the first sentence that the story's main character, Mrs. Mallard, is "afflicted with a heart trouble" (Chopin 605) and...
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...Literature Review of “The Story of an Hour” By Kate Chopin Introduction: "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin speaks to a negative perspective of marriage by giving the onlooker a lady who is plainly thrilled that her spouse has passed on. This is communicated through the dialect in "The Story of an Hour". The storyteller relates what she sees in straightforward exposition, yet when her feelings are portrayed, the words are energetic and influential. This proposes that Louis has a profound internal life that is not joined with the outside universe of her spouse or companions and the way that she houses herself in her room to run across her emotions is critical. The world outside of her own room is just negligibly depicted, yet the world within her psyche is enthusiastic and overall portrayed by the storyteller. The window outside of her room is alive and lively like her brain, while everything about her physically is sequestered. At the point when Louise's feelings are depicted in regards to something she is excited about, the dialect gets vivacious and rich with shade and dynamic pictures. This stands in sharp complexity to the segments in which she appears aloof or candidly unattached. It is essential to recognize not just the dialect becomes animated with the utilization of words like "mystery" and "impulse" but the exact stating evolving. The beginning feelings depicted in these quotes in which she was latent about is short clean sentences, yet when she starts to feel...
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...‘’VIEWPOINTS’’ The Story Of The Hour, by Kate Chopin, is about woman who struggles with oppression brought on by her husband and her secret desire for freedom. Mrs. Mallard doesn’t know how truly unhappy she is until she is told that he has died in train accident. The story is limited to a third-person point of view, but is not short on drama thanks to the structure and style of Chopin’s writing. Her theme of oppression is reveled by the irony of the story, in which she discovers a sense of freedom quickly after her husbands death. Chopin uses symbolism to emphasis this newly found feeling. The main character Mrs. Louise Mallard is a very easy to relate to. The structure and style that Chopin uses in The Story Of The Hour, is used to exaggerate the drama of what is taking place. She uses very short paragraphs the majority being only two to or three sentences a piece. The story is about the hour after Louise find out her husband is dead. It bring us quickly from a state of morning to a place where she realizes that she is “free” from the bondage of her husband. The structure of the story is reflects the intensity of emotions she exhibits. The length of the story leaves no room for a drawn out exposition, we shoot quickly from the that to the climax and end just as quickly after that. There is a lot of repetition through out the story, which she uses to emphasize the importance of certain points she makes. The word “open” is repeatedly used through out the story, “open window”(69)...
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...Fear Of Independence: Oppression of Women In The Nineteenth Century in “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman What lengths are women willing to go through to avoid being shunned by society; a society they, too, are apart of? Women in the ninetieth century are expected to be poised, courteous, managers of their homes and, most importantly, subordinate to their husbands as well as to society (Hartman). In both “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin (14) and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (118) the protagonists fear living life freely. Is their fear so strong and impossible to overcome that it drives one to insanity and the other to death? These women are expected to be healthy and strong. Unfortunately, due to their never-ending workload of being the perfect women society expects them to be, they are exhausted. Instead of society recognizing this, they are considered ill. Their illness is accepted because it is thought that their ailments are a result of being a woman, which explains to society why they are weak both physically and mentally. They are unlike the men of this time who do not suffer of such ailments! Even today when speaking to women who were raised by the women of the latter part of this era, stories are often told that a sign of a good woman is when her chimney is the first in the morning to start smoking and the last to be smothered. If you dare to question why...
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...The Loon Study Questions 1. What is the relationship between Vanessa and Piquette, and how does this relationship change? Vanessa's feelings towards Piquette change from discomfort to curiosity to embarrassment. 2. How are the Metis represented in the story? “if that half-breed youngster comes along to Diamond Lake, I'm not going” (188) Vanessa's images of Natives are drawn solely from literature, and these representations are only superficially positive. When Piquette doesn't reveal nature's secrets, Vanessa concludes “as an Indian, Piquette was a dead loss” (191) 3. What do the loons symbolize? “My dad says we should listen and try to remember how they sound, because in a few more years when more cottages are built at Diamond Lake and more people come in, the loons will go away” (190-91). Years later when Vanessa visits the lake, after the deaths of her father and Piquette, she realizes that the loons are no longer there. The loons become associated with death and loss, and while symbolic of Piquette, they are also an allegory of Canadian history. 4. What does Vanessa mean by the last sentence of the story? When Vanessa encounters Piquette as a young woman, she recognizes in Piquette what she hears in the loons' cries—“self-pity” (192) and “terrifying hope” (193); when Vanessa learns of Piquette's death soon after, she responds with silence. Vanessa's personal loss—of her father and of Piquette—is connected through the symbol of the loons...
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...of Married People Janet Vint Ashford University English 125 Prof. Benzon Barbin August 19, 2013 The Hidden Thoughts of Married People Telling a short story involves many different things. Theme, tone, irony, and plot are just a few that really make a story come alive. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber (b. 1939) and “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin (b. 1894) are two short stories that are written many years apart but still convey the same struggle that many people face with being married. Both stories display individuals that are having a hard time “finding themselves” or trying to go back and imagine their independence more or less by finding ways of escaping the “trapped” feeling of marriage. Both of the stories are portraits of the struggle that men and women face during a marriage. “The Story of an Hour” tells of a woman with a very weak heart condition that has been told that her husband has been killed in a railroad accident. While most people would have expressed great sadness (she did for a brief moment) in learning such horrible news, Mrs. Mallard felt more like she had received a whole new life, only later did she learn that she had been misinformed and that her husband was still very much alive. The same could be said in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”. This story tells of the restrictiveness of some marriages by giving great details of the constant daydreaming of a married man, who feels like he is being held prisoner by his...
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...of the story. But, because the narrator is looking back at situations and actions, her insights and feelings are also prominent, creating a reflective tone. "How I Met My Husband" and Point of View Wayne Clugston, author of Journey Into Literature, examines the role of first-person voice in Alice Munro's How I Met My Husband. Critical Thinking Questions Why does Wayne Clugston say that first-person point of view might be "unreliable"? What is another story you have read in first-person, and how did the use of first-person enhance or detract from the story? Alice Munro (1931—) ASSOCIATED PRESS/ChadHipolito/The Canadian Press Alice Laidlaw Munro was born in Wingham, a small town in southern Ontario, Canada. She began publishing short stories when she was a student at the University of Western Ontario. Since then, she has published seven collections of her stories, three of which received the Governor General's Award for fiction. Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013 in recognition of her distinctive craft and contributions to short story writing. Much of her work reflects perceptions she gained from observing the ordinary happenings and relationships of people in her small town and its rural surroundings. Speaking subtly to realities in today's world, Munro's work has a "looking back" quality, developed not with nostalgia but with clarity, humor, and insight, especially about women. How I Met My Husband Alice Munro (1974) Note that this story uses a...
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...assignment, you suddenly develop an enormous desire to straighten your books, water your plants, or sharpen your pencils for the fifth time. If this situation sounds familiar, you may find it reassuring to know that many professionals undergo these same strange compulsions before they begin writing. Jean Kerr, author of Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, admits that she often finds herself in the kitchen reading soup-can labels—or anything—in order to prolong the moments before taking pen in hand. John C. Calhoun, vice president under Andrew Jackson, insisted he had to plow his fields before he could write, and Joseph Conrad, author of Lord Jim and other novels, is said to have cried on occasion from the sheer dread of sitting down to compose his stories. To spare you as much hand-wringing as possible, this chapter presents some practical suggestions on how to begin writing your short essay. Although all writers must find the methods that work best for them, you may find some of the following ideas helpful. But no matter how you actually begin putting words on paper, it is absolutely essential to maintain two basic ideas concerning your writing task. Before you write a single sentence, you should always remind yourself that 1. You have some valuable ideas to tell your reader, and 2. More than anything, you want to communicate those ideas to your reader. These reminders may seem obvious to you, but without a solid commitment to your own opinions as well as to your reader, your prose will...
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