In “The Story of An Hour,” the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard, is informed about the railroad disaster where her husband was killed. She is immediately devastated. “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.” After Mrs. Mallard enters her room, she sat into the arm chair facing the open window. As she observes the landscape, she felt something possessing her. She began to whisper, “free, free,  free!” She came into realization that she was free, free from her husband, who probably prevented her from living her life the way she pleased. In the end, Mr. Mallard walks through the door. At the sight of her husband, Mrs. Mallard dies.

In “A Jury of Her Peers,” the protagonist Mrs. Wright, or Minnie Foster before her marriage, has murdered her husband. The cause of this I assume was because just as Mr. Mallard, Mr. Wright prevented his wife from living how she wanted to. Mrs. Hale finds Mrs. Wright’s bird with a broken neck, wrapped in silk. The bird used to sing along with Mrs. Wright, which was something she loved to do as Minnie Foster. As her husband probably despised this, he wrung the neck of the bird to prevent it from ever singing again. This was the same exact way Mr. Wright died, from his neck. Mrs. Wright probably wanted her husband to feel the pain of that what her bird felt.

I judge the two protagonists differently. Mrs. Mallard’s husband was killed in an accident, while Mrs. Wright’s husband was murdered. The settings of both stories seem to be around the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Today women have more rights than they did at the time of these stories. Reading them today gives a clearer understanding of why they reacted the way they did towards their husbands.

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