"The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin. Kate Chopin was an American writer who wrote mostly about sensitive, daring women. Her novel, The Awakening, and other short stories are still read across the world and made her be among the most recognized America's essential writers.
Thesis Statement: The Story of an Hours depicts feminism literature through the emotional oppression of Louise Mallard, how she lost her own identity within her marriage, and the brief joy she experiences upon having a taste of freedom independence holds upon the death of her husband.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Freedom’s core belief involves having the power or the right to act, speak, or think in a manner that one wants.
Freedom gives human beings, regardless of gender, the capacity to determine for themselves what they want, what suits them, and when opt-out of anything without being questioned.
One of the basic needs of humanity is freedom, which plays a central role in the social process, of which marriage forms part (Jafarzadeh, & Beheshti, 2012).
Louise lives in a marriage that brings her sadness and oppression as opposed to happiness. She fears about how long her days on earth might be, which indicates that she finds no joy in her life as a married woman. She finds new hope for the future in the wake of the death of her husband. The story depicts the repressive nature of the nineteenth-century marriages in which women were oppressed, and their only role was motherhood. During the century, women were not masters of their fate and relied on their husbands for everything. The complete reliance made women yearn for freedom since they were dominated and discriminated against.
Women's rights are fundamental. However, this was not the case in the nineteenth century, as the story narrates. Humanity involves love and compassion towards every human, regardless of their sexuality.
The lack of freedom for women in marriages led to the rise of feminism movements from as early as the eighteenth century. They were emotionally exploited and used as tools.
The emotional torture of women in the nineteenth century underwent led to the loss of their identity. The setting is a confining house that symbolizes domesticity. Women were treated in an inhumane manner, as they were seen as domestic workers. Many worked in domestic services for more affluent households, while those in wealthy families carried out home-based work such as sewing.
Women were destined to have no professions as their work was to stay at home, give birth to, and take care of children while carrying out domestic chores.
They were not considered equal to men. Men dictated what they could or could not do while led to emotional frustration. Consequently, women considered death better than remaining in marriages.
During the nineteenth century, the oppression of women appeared starkly in the marriage relation. Wedding bells rang in significant inequalities between brides and grooms, and there was a stern prescription of the different gender roles (Basch, 1986).
Feminism became more visible in the nineteenth century.
Women wanted more freedom. They began to see the oppression they underwent in marriages openly and started yearning for freedom.
Louis's room was upstairs from which she smelled freedom as she viewed tops of trees and heard birds singing. When she leaves her room, her loss of liberty is inevitable as it indicates her leaving her refuge and going downstairs to hell, her marriage, where death is her only way out.
Women saw freedom in death. It was an eye-opener of the inhumane treatment and emotional torture they went through in marriages.
Women could no longer endure the treatment they were subjected to, and so they had to make tough choices, which they would happily consider.
Women wanted freedom. Louis saw death as a representation of freedom as the alleged death of her husband releases her from the trappings of marriage and domesticity. When her husband returns alive, she dies on the spot, which further indicates how she sees death as her only escape to the unhappy marriage she is in.
The supposed train wreck takes place in spring, during the season of renewal. The abundance of new life during the time symbolizes the new freedom that Louis finds but then immediately withers when her husband, Brently, returns alive. He freedom is short-lived, but she enjoyed every bit of it
If women were willing to end their lives and feel good about the deaths of their husbands as an alternative to remaining under marriages, then it indicates how bad the situation was. It was terrible and inhumane.
It was upon everyone to realize that something was wrong. Feminism gained more momentum.
Conclusion
It is visible in the story that women were emotionally oppressed, which made them lose their identity in the marriages they were. They were treated as objects with no opinions and seen as less in comparison to their husbands.
The would go as far as considering death as an alternative and would never feel sad upon the death of their husband, which would give them the much-needed freedom. The treatment they underwent would facilitate the development of feminism.
References
Basch, F. (1986, October). Women's rights and the wrongs of marriage in mid-nineteenth-century America. In History Workshop Journal (Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 18-40). Oxford University Press.
Jafarzadeh, S., & Beheshti, M. B. (2012). Importance of freedom in humanities developing. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 31, 323-332.
