Büşra Karaman
07-11-302
421 Contemporary American Fiction
Spring, Midterm Paper
Dr. Sena Şahini
12.05.2016

A Fool’s Paradise In both America and Europe in the nineteenth century, men and women were supposed to be in different spheres of society. Women nearly had no rights to live a social life, while men were expected to work or socialize with men in bars, meetings or clubs. The duties of women were dealing with cooking, cleaning or catering all of men’s needs. Women were not supposed to spend their free time with socializing, instead of taking care of family related things. In the lights of these circumstances, the feminist approach has revealed itself in literature. One of the good examples of feminist literature is Kate Chopin’s short story “The Story of an Hour”, which exposes the lack of freedom of women in the 1800s. In her story, Chopin estimates the situation of women in marriage and she looks at the life from a female perspective. Mrs. Mallard, the heroine of the story, is a cardiac patient, who had been told what to do by her husband and could not make choices for herself. In a way, Chopin portrays what it is like to be a woman in the late nineteenth century through an ill protagonist. In the story Mrs. Mallard is told that her husband is dead, even though she is emotional at first, she leaps for joy with the recognition of freedom. However, when Mrs. Mallard learns her husband is alive, which means she will lose her moment of freedom all over again, she dies. “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills.” (Chopin 3) Analyzing of “The Story of an Hour” through the historical and feminist lenses, it can interpreted as an illustrating of a woman’s lack of freedom in a male-dominated society. “The Story of an Hour” was written in the Victorian Era, when a wife was responsible for all household chores without considering what she wanted to do. Just like most other women, Mrs. Mallard depends on her husband in her life. Under Mr. Mallard’s roof she has no independence or self-identity. Her identity belongs to Mr. Mallard; she is Mrs. Mallard, the wife of Mr. Mallard. The death of her husband makes her realize that she is free from her responsibilities, all the chores, the duties to her husband’s needs, but most importantly she is free to do whatever she wants in life. Mrs. Mallard displays how long she waited for this independence by whispering “free, free, free!” (Chopin 2). Her grief about her husband is replaced by acceptance of freedom and excitement.
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. (Chopin 2)
The death of her husband helps her to see her desire for self-determination, which she has not seen before, and probably never have seen if Mr. Mallard had lived. To describe Mrs. Mallard’s vision of self-determination Chopin writes:
There would be no one to live for her 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. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination. (2)
It is not about get rid of her husband, it is about taking control of her life. Furthermore, in “The Story of an Hour” the reader can see that the patriarchal society surrounds women with the four walls of their husband’s house. It is a remarkable detail that the entire time, the women in the story are in the Mallards’ house while the men can come and go as they wish. When Mrs. Mallard wants to be alone and opens up with the death of her husband she locks herself in her bedroom and looks outside from her open window. This open window presents bright and clear view of Mrs. Mallard’s future, which there is no one in the way. Nicole Smith refers to Mrs. Mallard’s confinement as:
The world outside of her own bedroom is only minimally described, but the world inside of her mind is lively and well described by the narrator. The window outside of her room is alive and vibrant like her mind, while everything about her physically is cloistered. (1)
There is no doubt losing her freedom out when she turns away from the window to get inside is not a coincidence that Chopin builds uwittingly. Lastly, based upon “The Story of an Hour” it can asserted that Chopin tries to depict and restructure the male-dominated society by taking the men’s pedestal position down, while uplifting women to a higher position. Chopin’s use of an irony at the end of the story is interpretable on two levels. First, it is ironic that Mrs. Mallard passes away just when she has a vision of new, independent life. Having the idea of liberation lasts an hour for Mrs. Mallard. The irony of her death, Mark Cunningham writes, is that even if her sudden epiphany is freeing, her autonomy is empty, because she has no place in society. (48-50) Secondly, the irony of Mrs. Mallard’s death has a sub-meaning with a feminist undertone that can be recognized when the doctors diagnose the cause of death as “heart disease—of joy that kills”. (Chopin 3) The irony here is that the experts, who are unsurprisingly men –who else can be a doctor in the nineteenth century–, misdiagnose the reason of her death because of their unawareness of a woman’s desires. It is clear that her shock is not because of joy over Mr. Mallard’s survival, but because of losing her newfound freedom. Louise Mallard has experienced the joy of being control on her own life. Ultimately, she would rather die than to be married. On the whole, the men in the story are portrayed as ignorant and unproductive, as Louise Mallard is portrayed as a woman who makes a martyr of herself for the sake of her desires, choosing death over marriage. The ending of Chopin’s story elevates women to the highest status, meanwhile men are described as silly and unheeding creatures. All in all, in the nineteenth century women were inferior to men in status and lacked of opportunities. In “The Story of an Hour” Louise Mallard wants to gain her independence and self-identity. The news of the death of Mr. Mallard prompts her to dream about fulfilling her desires, however; the return of her husband destroys all her dreams, which kills her. Mrs. Mallard’s dilemma between freedom and captivity ends with her own end. In her case, afterlife can be seen as free and peaceful.

Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. The Story of an Hour. 1984.
Cunningham, Mark. “The Autonomous Female Self and the Death of Louise Mallard in Kate
Chopin’s ‘Story of an Hour’” English Language Notes. (2004): 48-55.
Smith, Nicole. “Literary Analysis of ‘Story of an Hour’ by Kate Chopin.”
Language, Emotion and Marriage (2011): 1.