Feminsism

Part 1 Feminism

As humans, we live our life within the boundaries of our belief systems and moral guidelines we were raised with. Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and “Desiree’s Baby” tells the story of two women who live according to those societal boundaries.

American author Kate Chopin (1850вЂ"1904) wrote about a hundred short stories and two novels in the 1890s. Most of her fiction is set in Louisiana and most of her best-known work focuses on the lives of sensitive, intelligent women. After her father's death, Kate's family included her widowed mother, her widowed grandmother and her widowed great-grandmother. Perhaps this provides a glimpse of what would ultimately influence Kate Chopin as a writer-- the lack of male role models and men as central figures in her life as she matured. This lack would also prevent her from experiencing what was basically a fundamental social concept of her time--the tradition of submission of women to men in all social spheres, but especially that of marriage (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Chopin)

In 1888, after suffering grief from the deaths of her father, mother and her husband, Chopin turned to creative writing as an outlet. She was not particularly well known as a writer during her life. She began writing seriously at the age of 39, when she would have already experienced many maturing life situations. She found her central focus rapidly, and wrote stories whose intriguing characters and settings often disguised the seriousness of their themes. Not greatly involved in the politics of her time, she was nonetheless influenced by such classic masters as Maupassant who

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awakened her to ideas such as personal liberty and freedom. (http://empirezine.com/spotlight/chopin/chopin1.htm)

Chopin's characters in these two short stories are struggling for a sense of self and purpose. Themes as self-reliant women as protagonists, post Civil War racism, male/female relationships and what would eventually become known as male chauvinism are common. These were difficult times for many women because of the domination of men over them. A woman was expected to act and behave in ways that were submissive to men in every aspect of their life. Indeed, a woman’s life revolved around her husband and his needs and desires. Women had very little say in their own ambitions or desires. Behaving in non-conventional ways would mean being shunned from society. However, one woman’s world revolves around and for her husband while another dreams of a life free of marital boundaries.

Nevertheless, Kate Chopin uses two types of irony in “The Story of an Hour” to reflect her views. Situational irony refers to the opposite of what is supposed to happen, and dramatic irony occurs when the reader knows something that the rest of the characters in the story do not know. The irony in this short story makes the reader understand that the unexpected happens in life.

The first irony detected is in the way that Louise reacts to the news of the death of her husband, Brently Mallard. “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance”. Instead, she accepts it

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and goes to her room to be alone. After hearing the tragic news she goes up stairs and looks out an open window and notices spring in the air and all the new life it brings. The

descriptions used are as far away from death as possible. "The delicious breath of rain...the notes of a distant song...countless sparrows were twittering...patches of blue

sky....". All these are images of life, not death. She is not overcome by grief as one would expect, but instead begins to feel a sense of relief. As an illustration, “When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" In particular, “But 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”. Another example of Louise’s sense of joy is revealed in the sentence "Free! Body and soul free! she kept whispering”. This is a woman not overcome by grief, but relishing the freedom she believes is finally hers. Now we start to see the world through Louise's eyes, a new world for her to enjoy as she pleased; “Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long”.

However, the irony of the story is that Louise's husband has not died. In fact, when he comes home to Louise, his arrival ultimately kills her. The doctors say she died of joy, when the reader knows that she actually died because she had a glimpse of freedom and could not go back to living under her husband's dominance again.

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On the other hand, “Desiree’s Baby” mixed many feminist emotions from maternal love, to a wife’s love and devotion to her estranged husband. In a culture where marriage and motherhood were women's primary roles, Southern tradition did

not value the emotions or differing opinions of women. African Americans were deemed inferior to whites. Powerful, white men created this society and the roles for the women within. Southern women had little choice but to play the roles they were given and experience life as those men intended (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiree's_Baby).

Likewise, Desiree is a woman whose self-worth is primarily linked to that of