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The Plight of a Victorian Era Wife

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The Plight of a Victorian Era Wife

American author, Kate Chopin, in her narrative short story, "The Story of an Hour," recounts the story of an hour in the life of Mrs. Louise Mallard, a young woman "with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength" (Chopin, 605). Chopin's purpose for writing this short story is to address the lack of independence and social status that was an everyday part of life for married women living in the Victorian era. She adopts a sympathetic tone in order to appeal to similar feelings and experiences in her female readers.

In 1870, Kate married Oscar Chopin, a Louisiana businessman of French-Creole descent. In New Orleans, where Chopin and her husband lived until 1879, she was among Southern high society. Proper Southern women of this time were expected to be submissive, compliant and stoic. Coming from a long line of Southern females, I know this to be true. The society of this era viewed the altruistic wife, reliant on her husband and devoted to her children, as the feminine ideal. Chopin's forward-thinking literary works of the late nineteenth century were not considered socially acceptable, so it wasn't until the 1960s or 1970s that she became "an integral part of the evolution of feminism" (katechopin.org).

Chopin begins "The Story of an Hour" with an instant, essential revelation of the story's pinnacle. Readers learn in the first sentence that the story's main character, Mrs. Mallard, is "afflicted with a heart trouble" (Chopin 605) and she may not be able to endure anything that scares or upsets her. Mrs. Mallard's husband's friend, Richards, and her sister, Josephine, learn of her husband's death in a railroad disaster. "Great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death" (Chopin 605). Chopin uses Mrs. Mallard's condition to demonstrate the way

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