Gender relations and women’s rights have been expressed through poetry, novels and short stories for generations. Two short stories written around the late 1800’s show an expression of women’s rights in many ways. These stories are Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin, and Hills like White Elephants by, Ernest Hemmingway. Both short stories have hidden messages and gender related views that are not quite obvious. I will compare and contrast these two stories in depth and distinguish the many elements of feminism and women’s rights. Story of an Hour is about a middle aged woman named Ms. Mallard who was told her husband had just been killed in a train wreck. Friends and family came to her aid to console her as the news was delivered. At first Ms. Mallard looked disheartened and upset, but then broke out in happiness and relief. She would keep whispering “Free! Body and soul free!” Everyone was baffled by her reaction and pondered the reasons she felt such relief; they thought she was ill. Ms. Mallard was not crazy because in her mind she was finally a free woman. In the story there is a statement about her marriage, “Yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not.” Every marriage had its ups and downs, but there is underlying information that no one knows about her past. The joy that came over her body was so powerful and described as “monstrous” that her hear was racing and her emotions were running wild. As she is in the middle of this joy, her husband walks in the door; she falls to the ground and dies from a heart attack. Ms. Mallard’s husband’s death was a mistake and he was alive all along. The last sentence explains her death as “The joy that kills.”
The next story, Hills like white elephants keeps the reader in question and confusion from the beginning till the end. The setting of the story is at a train stop on a hot day. A man and a woman are having a