Kate Chopin "The Story of an Hour"

In this story, a woman, by the name of Mrs. Mallard, is told that her husband has died, but instead of being sad about it, she feels relieved; like a weight has been lifted off of her shoulder (Chopin). She kept on saying to herself how she was "free" (Chopin). Mrs. Mallard didn't hate her husband, but I don't think she was exactly found of him either. "And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not" (Chopin). Basically, she was all physicked that she was a free woman now, but then it turns out her husband didn't die, and she ended up dying herself from heart disease "of the joy that kills" (Chopin).
I can see how this relates to the time period because women during this time were expressing their needs for the same rights as men, and this shows how many women felt suffocated and inferior to the men in their lives.
This story also doesn't really have a happy ending. It is an ending that can actually happen and is realistic, which if you couldn't guess, falls into the Realism Period. I like this because it gets annoying when everything ends so happy all the time. Things don't always get resolved like they do in the movies, or in books/stories in general.
In a way this story is similar to both Thoreau and Emerson because they believed that you should follow what your soul wants you to do ("Henry...") ("Ralph...") and in this story Mrs. Mallard felt very free within her soul when she found out her husband had died (Chopin). Being free is also a theme that Emerson used ("Ralph...") and Mrs. Mallard obviously was feeling very free once her husband had died and very "un-free" when he was alive, and again when she found out he didn't die. so much so that she died herself) (Chopin). Other than that I didn't notice any other extreme similarities between Emerson/Thoreau and Kate Chopin's writing.


Chopin, Kate. ""The Story of an Hour"" Virginia Commonwealth University. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/hour/.

"Henry David Thoreau." (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Web. 23 Feb. 2012. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thoreau/.

"Ralph Waldo Emerson." (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Web. 23 Feb. 2012. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emerson/.