Meet Louise and Brently Mallard, a truly lovely young couple who share a genuine affection and softness for one another. Louise is dutiful, knowing her place, and Brently kind and attentive, as a husband should be. Knowing well of the couple’s endearment with one another, it is only imaginable the heartbreak Louise must feel after the news of her partner’s death falls upon her pretty ears, because her true thoughts are most assuredly unimaginable. In Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour, the reader meets Mrs. Louise Mallard, a young woman suffering from heart trouble who, at learning of her husband’s untimely death, breaks into hysterics, proceeding to isolate herself in her room. While in her privacy, the fresh widow joyfully discovers her new
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At age twenty, Kate O 'Flaherty married Oscar Chopin, and the couple settled in New Orleans, over time conceiving and raising 6 children. Independent by nature, Mrs. Chopin soon became a subject of gossip amongst local housewives as she was known to proudly smoke cigarettes and walk alone, as well as passionately debate political and social issues (SparkNotes Editors). After twelve years of marriage, Oscar unexpectedly passed on due to illness, leaving Kate to mourn his death, but eventually embrace her freedom. To support herself and her family after relocating to her hometown of St. Louis, Kate began to write fiction stories based on true life in Louisiana. Love, marriage, and the independence of women were all major themes in her works, and her novels and short stories were well received by the public. The Story of an Hour was published in 1894, and is a prime example of how Chopin cleverly inserted her personal views of society into her fictitious writings. The character of Louise Mallard is not unlike Kate herself as the death of a husband brings an end to a repressive, never-ending role that came with marriage in the late 1800’s. Both women lived for their husbands while they were alive, only beginning to live for themselves once their spouses had passed, granting them the freedom they had long
At age twenty, Kate O 'Flaherty married Oscar Chopin, and the couple settled in New Orleans, over time conceiving and raising 6 children. Independent by nature, Mrs. Chopin soon became a subject of gossip amongst local housewives as she was known to proudly smoke cigarettes and walk alone, as well as passionately debate political and social issues (SparkNotes Editors). After twelve years of marriage, Oscar unexpectedly passed on due to illness, leaving Kate to mourn his death, but eventually embrace her freedom. To support herself and her family after relocating to her hometown of St. Louis, Kate began to write fiction stories based on true life in Louisiana. Love, marriage, and the independence of women were all major themes in her works, and her novels and short stories were well received by the public. The Story of an Hour was published in 1894, and is a prime example of how Chopin cleverly inserted her personal views of society into her fictitious writings. The character of Louise Mallard is not unlike Kate herself as the death of a husband brings an end to a repressive, never-ending role that came with marriage in the late 1800’s. Both women lived for their husbands while they were alive, only beginning to live for themselves once their spouses had passed, granting them the freedom they had long