The women close to her did not benefit her in looking past these tragedies, nothing but the escape to writing (Seyersted 21). At an even younger age, Chopin saw the male dominancy in her father when she was sent to boarding school. Her mother Eliza, was known to be a strong woman as Toth mentions, “Her mother might have reminded Eliza that no matter how humiliated or betrayed she might feel, Thomas O’Flaherty was an excellent provider” (8). With O’Flaherty being an effective man to provide the essentials for a comfortable life, she would practically be forced to stay with him and then upon his death becoming a widow. Eliza became very wealthy within her widowhood (Toth 9) and “Her grandmother and great-grandmother had been practical Frenchwomen;
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Along with the other women in her life who were labeled as a widow, Kate Chopin was also one due to her husband, Oscar Chopin’s death. Mentioned in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening: A Sourcebook is “In life Chopin herself apparently explored wholeheartedly the possibilities that her new found ‘freedom’ afforded, her experiences finding expression as perhaps the most controversial feature of her writing- female sexual abandon, desire and adultery”(9). Becoming a widow was a reason that made her the feminist writer she was in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. She had a variety of successful writings, but society had rejected her due to her work- presenting women being involved in the public sphere. Her personal experiences with living life as a married woman and a widow made her passionate about gender equality and women’s …show more content…
Mallard’s dead husband, and this is where her thoughts and emotions give her some relief and hopes to finally unlock and remove the shackles she thought would be an eternal part of her. Chopin expresses Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts with the overall freedom that is sensed in the bedroom while she deliberately chooses to grieve alone. Director of Writing Assessment program Jennifer Hicks, observes a desire for freedom by stating “While the implication is that she would have no one follow her to her room, the reader wonders in hindsight whether Mrs. Mallard might have meant also that she would have no one interfere with her life again”(270). The narrator states, “There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul” (Chopin). It is here that Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts are expressing through the openness of the window as an open opportunity to receive her freedom and the new life she envisions. Along with Mrs. Mallard looking out the window are the “patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window” which gave her the appreciation of life opening up to her. However, the scenario of her still being inside the house reveals that her thoughts are just that – her thoughts. Not only does the narrator explain her desire for freedom
Along with the other women in her life who were labeled as a widow, Kate Chopin was also one due to her husband, Oscar Chopin’s death. Mentioned in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening: A Sourcebook is “In life Chopin herself apparently explored wholeheartedly the possibilities that her new found ‘freedom’ afforded, her experiences finding expression as perhaps the most controversial feature of her writing- female sexual abandon, desire and adultery”(9). Becoming a widow was a reason that made her the feminist writer she was in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. She had a variety of successful writings, but society had rejected her due to her work- presenting women being involved in the public sphere. Her personal experiences with living life as a married woman and a widow made her passionate about gender equality and women’s …show more content…
Mallard’s dead husband, and this is where her thoughts and emotions give her some relief and hopes to finally unlock and remove the shackles she thought would be an eternal part of her. Chopin expresses Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts with the overall freedom that is sensed in the bedroom while she deliberately chooses to grieve alone. Director of Writing Assessment program Jennifer Hicks, observes a desire for freedom by stating “While the implication is that she would have no one follow her to her room, the reader wonders in hindsight whether Mrs. Mallard might have meant also that she would have no one interfere with her life again”(270). The narrator states, “There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul” (Chopin). It is here that Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts are expressing through the openness of the window as an open opportunity to receive her freedom and the new life she envisions. Along with Mrs. Mallard looking out the window are the “patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window” which gave her the appreciation of life opening up to her. However, the scenario of her still being inside the house reveals that her thoughts are just that – her thoughts. Not only does the narrator explain her desire for freedom