At first glance, The Story of an Hour, by Kate Chopin, seems to be just a short story with a dramatic ending. In reality, The Story of an Hour has a much deeper meaning than what’s on the surface. Kate Chopin, a 19th century short story writer and novelist, wrote this story from the point of view of Mrs.Mallard, the wife who was just given the news of her husband’s death. From the moment Mrs.Mallard was given the news, there was already a few unusual events that were taking action. Chopin wrote a story that is full of symbolism that represents the lack of gender equality for women within America in the late 1800’s. The story made a clear statement about gender equality using Mrs.Mallard as a representation of the female population in that time …show more content…
Chopin made her gender inequality theme clear by using Mrs.Mallard to represent all women when she talked about how much she wanted freedom from the man, Mr.Mallard represent the presence of men and how they will always be in the way of women’s rights, and the three minor characters represent society and the way they think Mrs.Mallard should react. Chopin was able to show her views over gender equality through symbolism in her short story. The Story of an Hour shows just how bad equality was right up until the late 1800’s, early 1900’s, when everything started changing and women began to receive equality within America. Today, we still have problems with gender equality but, overall, we’ve gotten to a point where Chopin would have been proud to live in this time period. Chopin wrote stories like this to inspire other women to stand up and make a change, and that’s exactly what happened. Chopin became an inspiration to women in that time period, but even as her stories and novels become less popular, her feminist legacy will always live on and