Cheyenne Scott
Ms. Wooley English 2, 1st Block 17/Aug/17
Kate Chopin’s Story on Female Discovery
What was expected of women in the 1890s? Complacency, obedience, and a good attitude; a contented acceptance of this role. A happiness to exist as subservient beings, and not much else. Some would say this expectation is still latent in society today, and though to say womens’ rights haven’t progressed since the 1890s is blatantly dishonest, it’s equally dishonest to suggest feminism is obsolete in modern times. An example of an earlier feminist work is “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin.
Louise Mallard plays the role of the contented subordinate to her husband, Brently Mallard- that is, until, the news is broken to her …show more content…
To have freedom given and taken away in such a short period, just as she saw the stretch of her life ahead of her and began looking forward to it, was so shocking that death was preferable to going back to the life she had been living before. This is Chopin expressing the main point of the story overall again, that holding a person as a possession with no identity of their own is abuse in its own right, and for some, a situation worse than death. Emotional abuse is as much abuse as physical, and taking away someone’s self identity, their freedom, is just as much abuse as any other - purposeful or not. To assume one would be happy living as an accessory to someone else’s life, one is already unfit for a relationship with another human being.
Had Chopin’s story been published today it would be seen as far from a breakthrough - the husband is still seen as sympathetic, the abuse is left too ambiguous, Mallard turns out to not even be free at all, dying at the end - it expressed ideas that were very controversial at the
Ms. Wooley English 2, 1st Block 17/Aug/17
Kate Chopin’s Story on Female Discovery
What was expected of women in the 1890s? Complacency, obedience, and a good attitude; a contented acceptance of this role. A happiness to exist as subservient beings, and not much else. Some would say this expectation is still latent in society today, and though to say womens’ rights haven’t progressed since the 1890s is blatantly dishonest, it’s equally dishonest to suggest feminism is obsolete in modern times. An example of an earlier feminist work is “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin.
Louise Mallard plays the role of the contented subordinate to her husband, Brently Mallard- that is, until, the news is broken to her …show more content…
To have freedom given and taken away in such a short period, just as she saw the stretch of her life ahead of her and began looking forward to it, was so shocking that death was preferable to going back to the life she had been living before. This is Chopin expressing the main point of the story overall again, that holding a person as a possession with no identity of their own is abuse in its own right, and for some, a situation worse than death. Emotional abuse is as much abuse as physical, and taking away someone’s self identity, their freedom, is just as much abuse as any other - purposeful or not. To assume one would be happy living as an accessory to someone else’s life, one is already unfit for a relationship with another human being.
Had Chopin’s story been published today it would be seen as far from a breakthrough - the husband is still seen as sympathetic, the abuse is left too ambiguous, Mallard turns out to not even be free at all, dying at the end - it expressed ideas that were very controversial at the