“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman share the same view of the inferior position of women in the 1800’s. In “The Story of an Hour,” Mrs. Mallard’s husband dies and she becomes hysterical because she thinks she is finally free, but when she discovers that her husband is actually still alive, she dies from shock. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator 's husband thinks she is depressed and traps her in a room to rest and heal, yet she becomes insane due to the captivity. Both authors, Chopin and Gilman, demonstrate the destructive effects of the oppression of women in the late 1800’s by using symbolism and irony in contrasting ways, while both pieces still resulting in an internal conflict.
One major difference between the literary techniques in the stories is the concepts in which the authors push using symbolism. Chopin uses the symbolism of freedom in order to display the maltreatment of women. In Chopin’s story, the main character, Mrs. Mallard, is physically “afflicted with a heart trouble” (1174). Symbolically this represents her ambivalence towards the idea of marriage and her overall discontentment with her lack of freedom. Mrs. Mallard makes this clear when she exclaims after her husband dies that “[t]here would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which …show more content…
In “The Story of an Hour,” the main character only finds freedom in death. In the beginning she finds liberty in her husband’s fatality, when in fact he never died (Chopin 1175). The revelation that Mr. Millard is actually alive resulted in her demise (Chopin 1175). Thus, granting her freedom once again. Irony is also used in Mrs. Mallard’s name. A mallard is defined as a wild, free, untamed duck, whereas, Mrs. Mallard is just the opposite; she is controlled by society and her
One major difference between the literary techniques in the stories is the concepts in which the authors push using symbolism. Chopin uses the symbolism of freedom in order to display the maltreatment of women. In Chopin’s story, the main character, Mrs. Mallard, is physically “afflicted with a heart trouble” (1174). Symbolically this represents her ambivalence towards the idea of marriage and her overall discontentment with her lack of freedom. Mrs. Mallard makes this clear when she exclaims after her husband dies that “[t]here would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which …show more content…
In “The Story of an Hour,” the main character only finds freedom in death. In the beginning she finds liberty in her husband’s fatality, when in fact he never died (Chopin 1175). The revelation that Mr. Millard is actually alive resulted in her demise (Chopin 1175). Thus, granting her freedom once again. Irony is also used in Mrs. Mallard’s name. A mallard is defined as a wild, free, untamed duck, whereas, Mrs. Mallard is just the opposite; she is controlled by society and her