THE STORY OF AN HOUR

The Story Of An Hour



The Story Of An Hour

Introduction

Critical reading of Chopin's works often note the stress between feminine individual characteristics and the humanity that surrounds them.  Margaret Bauer proposes that Chopin is worried with discovering the “dynamic interrelation between women and men, women and patriarchy, even women and women” (Angeline 2004 ).  Often, detractors aim on the significance of confrontation in these works and the way in which Chopin values gender constraints on two grades, to open an avenue for the consideration of feminine persona and, at the identical time, to critique the patriarchal humanity that refutes that identity.  Kay Butler proposes that “entrapment, not flexibility, is the source of Chopin's inspiration, for she is mainly worried with discovering the way in which gender functions refute identity”;  she continues:  “yet without the entrapment, the inquiry of persona, even the inspiration to compose about persona, wouldn't exist” (Bauer 2007). 

 

Discussion

Chopin's “The Story of an Hour” most poignantly balances the dual aim of her work, recounting the incipient awakening of Mrs. Mallard, and therefore discovering the likelihood of feminine persona, even while, finally, rejecting the fruition of such an experience.  Like all of her works, this short article answers to a exact chronicled structure, the Cult of True Womanhood, in its indictment of patriarchal culture.  As Barbara Welter remarks, in the nineteenth 100 years, “a women judged herself and was judged by her married man, her friends, and society” by the attributes of a True Woman which encompassed, particularly, “purity” and “domesticity” (Butler 2001) .  The notion of purity, because it proposed that women should sustain their virtue, furthermore, paradoxically, refuted their rank as emotional and affectionate beings.  Similarly, the notion of domesticity, because it relegated women to the dwelling, refuted their thoughtful and expert capabilities. 

“The Story of an Hour” recounts the excursion of Mrs. Mallard against the Cult of True Womanhood as she gradually becomes cognizant of her own yearns and therefore of a feminine self that has long been suppressed.  While this excursion starts with the report of her husband's death, Mr. Mallard's unforeseen come back at the very end of the tale tragically slashes short the excursion in the direction of feminine selfhood.  Yet the tale is tragic from starting to end, for the very try to conceive an persona against the gender constraints of patriarchal humanity is riddled with a sense that such an try can only end in defeat.  “The Story of an Hour” illustrates that the patriarchal humanity that characterises gender functions which command and delimit women's knowledge refute them a self founded on factual feminine desires.  Ultimately, (Chopin 2004) Mrs. Mallard's excursion in the direction of selfhood only serves to disclose the erasure of persona, really of being, that women skilled in the nineteenth century. 

Through symbolically and ironically proposing that gender delineations delimit the feminine self, the unfastening of “The Story of an Hour” signs of the tragedy that pervades the ...