Kate Chopin, author of "Story of an Hour," lost her
husband in 1882 and was left to care for her six children on her own. One way she did
this was to write, and her writing was not always "comfortable" for audiences of the
1800s as she questioned the submissive role of women (along with their passionate
nature).
Something that was coming to light within society
at this time was:
...the "Woman Question," [and what] roles were
acceptable for women to assume in
society.
In "Story of an
Hour," the message that Chopin is sharing with the audience defies the stereotypical
role a woman had to play then—being "attached" to a man who believed it was his right by
society and God to control his woman. We understand through Louise that Brently (her
"dead" husband) was never unkind to her on purpose, but the fact that he never allowed
her to know or be herself is a terrible sin in her eyes. It is only when she believes
that he is dead that her sense of self rises to the surface, showing Louise a side of
life that she had never imagined.
And although Louise feels
wicked in celebrating her "freedom" at the cost of Brently's life, she knows that now
her life will now have meaning—something she never knew she was missing. The concept of
personal freedom is so great that she is almost drunk with it. When her sister-in-law
Josephine convinces Louise to come out of her locked room, Louise carries herself like a
queen down the stairs. She has been reborn. Whereas she had worried that the days of her
life would drag on forever, now she prays that there will be an endless number of days
ahead of her that she might enjoy the rebirth she has
experienced.
As they descend the stairs, a key sounds in
the lock; Brently Mallard appears with no knowledge of the railway disaster that
ostensibly took his life. However, in that instant, Louise realizes that she will not
have the freedom she has so briefly tasted. The audience knows that Louise dies because
the idea of returning to her former life is intolerable to
her.
The doctors who arrive and announce it was heart
trouble, that "she had died of heart disease—of the joy that kills," support the
male-dominated idea that a woman could only exist with a man to provide for her; she
was, after all, the weaker sex, and intellect was not something of which most men
believed their wives capable.
The doctors who arrive after
Louise collapses are symbolic of a society that could never free its women to exist on
their own merits, married or not. A woman simply did not have it within her to exercise
her own will or develop original thoughts or opinions: her happiness—her very
existence—came from the meaningful role of wife and
mother.
Louise and most of the women of her time were
oppressed— "shackled" by the norms of the society in which Kate Chopin
lived.
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