Free Body and Soul: Lacked Women's Freedom in Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"

Free Body and Soul: Lacked Women 's Freedom in Kate Chopin 's "The Story of an Hour" "The Story of an Hour" was written by Kate Chopin, who was a famous feminist writer in the late 19th centry. Also, "The Story of an Hour" is one of the feminist masterwork in the world. In the short story, Louise was excited that she would no longer have to bend to her husband 's will. She was briefly described as "young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength" (49). After she learned the death of her husband, she was sad at first. However, she quickly started to feel a kind of uncertain sense of freedom. The happiness, which Louise gained by the death of her husband, was so strong that, when she realized her husband was alive in fact, she immediately fell apart. The doctor said, Louise was died because she was happy to see her husband, but most readers believed she was died of the sadness about losing the freedom of new life. When she heard the news of her husband was alive, she realized she was no longer free. Lawrence I. Berkove said,"Given her dissatisfaction with the best that life has to offer her and her unrealistic expectations of absolute freedom, therefore, there [was] no other option for Louise except death" (6). In this case, the death of Louise showed that she was desired the freedom. Therefore, in the short story, Chopin uses irony, imagery and symbolism to reveal the tragedy that women in that times lacked freedom. In Chopin 's story, she utilizes irony more than once to indicate Louise was eager to be free. When Chopin writes about Josephine, who was Louise 's sister, asking Louise to "open the door" (49), Chopin makes readers thinking about the mind of those two characters and shows the irony in this situation. From Josephine 's remark, "open the door -- you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise?" (49), we can easily know that Josephine thought Louise should be very upset because of the death of her

Cited: Berkove, Lawrence I. "Fatal Self-Assertion in Kate Chopin 's 'The Story of an Hour '." American Literature Realism 32.2(Winter 2000): p 152-158. Web. 14 July 2012. Hick, Jennifer. "An overview of 'The Story of an Hour '." Short Stories for Students. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Web. 14 July 2012. Jamil, S. Selina. "Emotion in The Story of an Hour." The Explicator67.3 (2009): 215+. Web. 14 July 2012. Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." 050 Literature and Writing Course Book. Ed. ESL Program, University of Regina. USA: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2012. 48-50. Print.