A Feminist Perspective of Kate Chopins The Story of an Hour Essay

A Feminist Perspective of Kate Chopins The baloney of an HourKate Chopin employs the tool of irony in The Story of an Hour to carefully convey the problem inherent in womens unequal role in marital relationships. Chopin develops a careful plot in indian lodge to demonstrate this idea, one not socially unexceptionable at the end of the 19th century, and unfortunately, a concept that still does not appreciate widespread bankers acceptance today, 100 years later as we near the end of the 20th century. Louise Mallards death, foreshadowed in the initial line Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with heart get at takes on quite a different meaning when the plot twists and the context of her sudden death is presented unexpectedly, not upon her shock at her husbands death, but instead in her inability to endure the fact that he confronts. While Chopins employment of irony presents a socially unaccepted concept in a more acceptable format, it is the authors use of perspective that i ncreases the impact of her message. Chopins point might be lost, perhaps entirely, if the reader were not informed from Louises viewpoint. While the other characters are oblivious to her developed joy in death, although it is described as such When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease - of joy that kills, their definition of this joy equates to her love for her husband. In contrast, because Chopin writes from the perspective of Louise, we hear that the intermittent love she feels for her husband, love itself dismissed as the unsolved mystery, pales in comparison to the joy she feels upon the discovery that she can now live with the possession of assumption which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being. ... ...for his wife Louise, Chopin writes to stress the problematic assumption inherent in an unequal relationship in which one soulfulness exercises their powerful will to bend others. Louise Mallard finds personal personnel in her hus bands death, ready to face the world as a whole person She aphonic a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday (prior to her husbands death) she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. The strength conveyed in the image of Louise carrying herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory is unmistakable. However, the irony that her husband lives, and therefore, she cannot, conveys the limited options socially acceptable for women. Once Louise Mallard recognizes her desire to live for herself, and the impossibility of doing so within the bounds of her marriage, her heart will not allow her to turn back.