Category Archives: Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin’s Story of an Hour. (Post for comment and Discussion) Christelle.

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Freedom from feminist constraint is a common theme in Kate Chopin’s work. She is in fact considered one of the first feminist writers that would, later on, emerge more prominently in the late 20th century. What might perhaps set her aside from other feminist writers is that for most of her adult life she conformed to the conventional role of housewife, it is not until her husband’s death that she begins her career in the literary arts. Although we can never speculate as to her feelings about her husband’s death, we can state that it has had an immense impact on her writing. Freedom from feminist constraint through the death of a patriarch is explored in “The Story of An Hour”. What we understand about Mrs. Mallard’s desire for freedom in the story is that she doesn’t feel like she is her own person and is only through the absence of the patriarch (her husband) that she feels she can come into her own being. When he again becomes present, she knows that she would again be an object. By examing the text, specifically her contemplation, we will then determine if she had achieved freedom in her own death.

We can induce that Mrs. Mallard was in at the least in a loving and steady marriage. Mr. Mallard did exhibit some form of care and sensitivity to his wife. This is exhibited in the following quotation,” she knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead.”. She does feel remorse for the loss of her spouse and that this is a bittersweet moment in her life, although the latter (sweeter) more so as she contemplates more on what this means for her. It is important to note that she holds no resentment for her husband because it demonstrates that the confines she finds herself were constructed outside of their relationship.

As I stated in the introduction Mrs. Mallard does not feel she can act out of her own will and consciousness. She must always be in mind of her role as a married woman. In other words, everything that she does reflects as well as affects her husband’s reputation. This is the predicament that many upper-class women found themselves at the time the story was written. And so her life is not her own. As written in the text “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature” With him gone and no one men to associate (or belong to), her actions are own to decide and to be judged for.

 

To conclude Mrs. Mallard does not find freedom in her death. She only thought about the possibilities that it may bring but she did not exercise that freedom.

 

 

The Story of An Hour – Third-Person to First-Person Narration

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Part 1 – Narration Change

“Mrs. Mallard!” called out Richards, a friend of my husband from the living room. My sister Josephine helped me get up from the wooden chair I was sitting on while eating my breakfast. My heart is weak and isn’t what it used to be.

Josephine helped me sit on the brown leather sofa. Josephine and Richards sat across me with worried looks on their faces. Josephine held out her hand and held mine. I could feel the warmth and humidity of her hand. There was something she was nervous about.

“Sister…” began Josephine.

“Richards was at the newspaper office when the news came in that a train was derailed…” Josephine took a deep breath. She could barely look at me at this point.

“…and Brently’s name was listed among those who were killed.”

As soon as the last word left her mouth, I threw myself into Josephine’s arms and wept uncontrollably. My husband was dead. The man who I built so many memories with was taken from me.

We embraced for some time until my tears were spent. I kissed Josephine on the cheek and gave her a passionate hug. I stood up and began to make my way back to my room.

“Sister, where are you going?” asked Josephine with worry in her voice.

“I want to spend some time in my room,” I replied. Josephine began to get up from her seat in an attempt to accompany me.

“I wish to be alone, Josephine.” She sat back down with a worried look on her face.

I closed the door behind me as I gazed at the open window. In front of it, an armchair. Into this armchair I sat, nearly being swallowed by it. I laid my eyes upon the city outside of the window. I could see the tops of the green trees moving caused by the warm spring winds. In the distance, I could hear vendors selling their goods and the songs of both passerbys and birds.

As I fixated on the small patches of blue sky that littered the grey, cloudy patchwork visible through the window, an overwhelming desire to cry washed over me. I succumbed to the desire as I stared blankly at the blue patches, with tears once again beginning to run down my cheek.

Something began to form in the skies. I couldn’t tell what it was but it began to reach towards me. As it drew closer, it became more and more familiar. I attempted to resist it but my will, just like my body, was in no position to fight and it quickly broke through my defenses. “Free”, I murmured, almost subconsciously. “Free, free, free!”. The sweet words flowed like a river.

I took a deep breath and now I could think clearly. I will soon have to look at Brently’s gentle face for the final time. Brently had always treated me fairly during our marriage but my passions, ideas, and dreams, were always a second priority. I began to think further ahead. Think further ahead to when I could finally be able to live on my own terms. To be allowed to follow my passions, ideas, and dreams.

These thoughts filled me with an immense sense of hope that flowed through my body. Finally, I would be in control of my life. “Free! Body and soul free!” I whispered.

Suddenly, a knock came from the door. “Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door — you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door.” pleaded Josephine from behind the door.

“Go away. I am not making myself ill, feeling better than ever before as I said this. I quickly recited a prayer asking the Lord to give me a long life, in contrast to my thoughts from a few days ago. My fragile heart could mean a shorter time on this earth, so I asked the Lord to lend me some time.

I just about sprung out of the armchair and with a newfound pep in my step, I walked to the door and twisted the handle. I saw Josephine standing there and couldn’t help but to smile. We were sisters but after my marriage to Brently, Josephine and I barely spent any time together. The duty of a housewife always kept me busy and unable to have time to be with friends and family. Now would be the time to make up for lost time.

We made our way to the stairs, with Josephine holding my waist, we descended the stairs to meet Richards, who was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

I kept a close eye on each step I took, careful not to slip. I heard the door begin to open but my eyes were still fixated on the stairs. Then I heard Josephine let out a ear piercing shriek and had no choice but to break my concentration and look at the door.

It was Brently with a confused look on his face as Richards attempted to block his entrance into his own home. I was glad to see Brently alive and well but this meant the death of my dreams and aspirations. My freedom was stripped of me and the bonds of an unfair marriage were placed on me once again. The weight of this realization caused my knees to buckle. I collapsed and briefly felt the cold floor against my head as I looked at the lights above. I closed my eyes to visit where my dreams and aspirations now rested.

Part 2 – Comparing Narration Styles

“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin is a fictional short story that centers around Mrs. Mallard, a woman who had just found out about the death of her husband, Brently Mallard, she is devastated at first but her sorrow soon turns into joy when she realizes that she is finally free from the bonds of marriage, bonds that prevented her from following her dreams and forced her into living for others. The story is written in a limited third-person narration. The narrator sees every event but mainly focuses on a single character, in which they have access to their thoughts. I decided to rewrite the story in first-person, from the perspective of Mrs. Mallard.

Although Chopin mainly writes about Mrs. Mallard’s realization that she is now free, I chose to focus more on Mrs. Mallard’s relationship between her husband and her sister, adding in dialogue, and to add what Mrs. Mallard may have been thinking when she saw her husband again.

At the beginning of the story, immediately after receiving the news of her husband’s death, Chopin writes this: “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.”.

I wanted to add more detail to Mrs. Mallard’s grief so I wrote the following: “ I threw myself into Josephine’s arms and wept uncontrollably. My husband was dead. The man who I built so many memories with was taken from me.
We embraced for some time until my tears were spent. I kissed Josephine on the cheek and gave her a passionate hug. I stood up and began to make my way back to my room.”.

I made this change because I wanted to make it clearer that Mrs. Mallard did truly love her husband. I also made the addition of dialogue because I felt that would make the characters a little more personal.

Following the initial tears of losing her husband, Mrs. Mallard retreats to her room and that is when and where she rediscovers her freedom. Her marriage had restricted her so much but with Mr. Mallard’s death, that was no longer the case. I didn’t change much from the original story, only a few minor detail changes. What I did change/add was Mrs. Mallard’s thinking.

In Chopin’s story, she wrote the following: “She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister’s waist, and together they descended the stairs.”.

There is no mention of Mrs. Mallard’s feeling towards her sister so I wanted to add some in to make them seem closer. I wrote “… I walked to the door and twisted the handle. I saw Josephine standing there and couldn’t help but to smile. We were sisters but after my marriage to Brently, Josephine and I barely spent any time together. The duty of a housewife always kept me busy and unable to have time to be with friends and family. ”.

I included that part because I wanted to flesh out Mrs. Mallard’s relationships more and because I wanted to show the reader how excited Mrs. Mallard had become with her new outlook on life now that she was getting over the death of her husband.

Now we reach the end of the story and the end of Mrs. Mallard’s life. Chopin chooses writes the death of Mrs. Mallard with no insight into her thoughts at the time.

“ Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease–of the joy that kills.”.

Chopin decides to end the story soon after Mrs. Mallard lays eyes on her supposedly dead husband and offers little insight into the thoughts of the former widow after the surprise. I wanted to linger more on her death and to add what Mrs. Mallard may have been thinking before she died. I wrote: “It was Brently with a confused look on his face as Richards attempted to block his entrance into his own home. I was glad to see Brently alive and well but this meant the death of my dreams and aspirations. My freedom was stripped of me and the bonds of an unfair marriage were placed on me once again. The weight of this realization caused my knees to buckle. I collapsed and briefly feeling the cold floor against my head while I looked at the lights above. I closed my eyes to visit where my dreams and aspirations now rested.”.

I added this part in because I wanted to show what Mrs. Mallard may have been thinking when she saw her husband alive again, to make Mrs. Mallard a little more personal.

In terms of what was lost and what was gained from a change of narration type, there isn’t a world of difference. In the original story, we learn that Richards (Mr. Mallard’s friend) double-checked to make sure if Mr. Mallard was actually killed. In my version, this part is omitted entirely. So we lose insight into events that were beyond Mrs. Mallard’s view, switching to first-person.

What we gain is the characters become more personal through dialogue. Since we see through the eyes of Mrs. Mallard, the conversation may seem more personal. In addition, in my version, we get to see that Mrs. Mallard’s marriage had unfortunately kept her and her sister separate.

In conclusion, “The Story of An Hour” by Kate Chopin, is a story written in a limited third-person narration. I chose to rewrite the story in first-person, from the view of Mrs. Mallard.  Chopin chooses to focus on Mrs. Mallard’s realization that she is free from a restrictive marriage, while I chose to focus on more on the relationship between Mrs. Mallard and her sister and her husband, adding dialogue, and to add what Mrs. Mallard may have been thinking when she saw her husband alive.

 

Reading all kinds of love on Valentine’s Day

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To accommodate more discussion, we will continue discussing “A Rose for Emily” on Tuesday, 2/20. Please keep up with the two Charlotte Perkins Gilman readings, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Cottagette” so you finish them for Wednesday, 2/21.

When we think about “The Story of an Hour” and “A Jury of Her Peers,” what do we think about? what points of intersection are there?

oppressed wife

  • in “A Jury of Her Peers” we understand the ways that the men speak to the women as insulting

oppressive husband

husband’s death (?)

freedom: finding it, losing it

demographics and social status: class, age, gender

narration style

sympathy and empathy: within the stories and the reader’s empathy for characters

small event

pent up emotion and anger specifically

facilitated vs present character

*people outside never really know other than what they can see on the surface*

Minnie Foster vs Mrs. Wright–can this parallel Mrs. Mallard vs Louise. Loss of a first name in marriage.

 

Reading “A Rose for Emily”

First-person plural narrator: represents the whole town

Chronology: this is difficult to piece together, but all told from the point of Emily’s funeral

Short quiz on chronology: what happened when?

Mrs. Mallard’s freedom

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  • We really wanted to spend more time looking at the ending of Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour.” What do we understand about Mrs. Mallard’s desire for freedom in the story? Does she have freedom at the end of the story?

I believe that it is safe to assume that Mrs. Mallard was too overwhelmed by the thought of freedom due to the fact that she was deprived of it for so long. She had, up until the moment she was given the news of her husband’s alleged death, been emotionally suffocated by him. Seen when the narrator describes the state of Mrs. Mallards’ face as being one, ” whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength”, we can assume that the lines on her face were being repressed by Mr. Mallard, and that those lines were made by her smile, that for years Mrs. Mallard was not happy throughout the course of her marriage. But the lines on her face could also refer to Mrs. Mallard’s physical appearance, wrinkles, and this line could be referring to the social exceptions that demand she force herself to look beautiful and young for the sake of her husband’s happiness. “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself… There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.” There was a clear shift in tone in this short story from mournful to a sigh of relief, Mrs. Mallard at first sign of news cried her eyes out, then locked herself in a room to be alone, only to be confronted by this idea of what now? Then her attitude begins to shift realizing the benefits of her husband passing and claiming freedom as her own. And she did not hate her husband rather she saw that as long as he was alive she could not be free, “she knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.” By the end of the story Mrs. Mallard is free she dies before being informed that her husband is alive, so in her mind she was free, and her freedom is shown through a change in how she is addressed. From the beginning she was introduced as Mrs. Mallard, and it is usual in “traditional circumstances” that upon marriage the woman takes the man’s last name. So she is only known as being someone’s wife. She continues to be addressed throughout the story as Mrs. Mallard, until her sister Josephine addresses her as “Louise” shedding her title, “Mrs”. She was no longer a wife, shed the title of “Mrs.”, and she was able to reclaim her identity through being called by her name. Which made her free in the end.

https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/webtexts/hour/

Homework posts on Lowe, Atwood, Glaspell, Chopin, and Faulkner

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If you volunteered to post by end-of-day on Friday so that everyone can comment on your posts by 10:00am Monday, here are some ideas to get you started (choose one, or get inspired by one or two):

  • We really wanted to spend more time looking at the ending of Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour.” What do we understand about Mrs. Mallard’s desire for freedom in the story? Does she have freedom at the end of the story?
  • Think of the various details mentioned in Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers.” Point us to a few examples, including quotations from those passages. How do these examples become important details in the story? How do the men and women read these details specifically and details in general differently in “A Jury of Her Peers”?
  • Another way to consider the details in “A Jury of Her Peers” is to consider what the women do with details to understand the backstory as reading the scene; consider in a post the model for critical reading this short story presents. Alternatively, how is “There Was Once” a model for critical reading? What does the second speaker do with the Cinderella story, and how or to what extent is that something we should do when we read? What does it do in that story, and what could it do for us as we read critically?
  • If Margaret Atwood’s short story “There Was Once” and Anne Sexton’s poem “Cinderella” attempt to retell the fairy tale, what does Bia Lowe’s “I Always Write about My Mother When I Start to Write” do with fairy tales? We started discussing this in class. What aspects of fairy tales does it borrow, and what is the effect of this motif? Be sure to learn about what a motif is if you choose this option, and feel free to add it as your glossary entry for this week (but this only goes for one person, and the post’s author has priority!
  • What effect does the style of narration have on your experience of the plot or characters? Use two different styles to reflect on this, using any of the stories we have read this semester.
  • What connections do you see among the stories assigned from the start of the semester through Monday? Are there trends you can identify? Or contrasting situations/characters/styles that are worth noting in their difference? Be specific!
  • In thinking about William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” who is the narrator? is it a reliable narrator? Use evidence from the story to show why you say reliable or not.
  • What does gothic mean?  What is Southern Gothic, specifically? Wikipedia might be a good place to get a definition and explanation of what Southern Gothic is. How is  “A Rose for Emily” an example of this? You might add this term as your glossary entry word as well.
  • Finally, if you’re interested, argue for or against “A Rose for Emily” as a Valentine’s Day reading. What notion of love do you take away from this story?

These are just a few ideas that you might consider, and certainly not all of them will be addressed. I hope my suggesting them gives everyone ideas about other topics for discussion and other ways to read the short stories we have begun to cover in class. For your post, choose one of these topics, or venture off on your own topic, using any of these as a guide to make sure your topic is as focused. Use the texts to guide you, consider that your audience (mostly your classmates and me) will have read the same materials but might not have thought about them as much as you have or in the same way that you did, and enjoy sharing your ideas. On the nitty-gritty end of things, remember to include a title that reflects what you’re writing (it shouldn’t be able to apply to everyone’s post!), choose appropriate categories and tags (or add if you want a tag that isn’t there already), write at least 300 words, proofread, and publish! If there are links or media you want to include, please do.

Commenters: get ready! Everyone who isn’t writing a blog post will need to comment by 10:00am Monday, so make sure you’re ready with 100-150 words of insights and reactions to share with the class.

Feel free to comment on this post to ask questions or get clarification to understand this assignment better. I will answer, but feel free to answer questions for your classmates if you have the answer!