Chopin Thesis

    1)      Kate Chopin's construction of character in "The Story of an Hour" reinforces the author's ideas about women's struggle for equality during the early 1900's as well as today. Chopin's character Louise Mallard achieves freedom when she finds out of her husband's alleged death, firmly giving the reader the sense that a woman is free when she is no longer tied to a man. Just as Chopin gives Louise Mallard "freedom" she rips it from her when she reveals that her husband was never killed.  Louise dies because of the misunderstanding but it shows that her character's death is the same as being married in the patriarchal society she lived in.

    2)        By contrasting images of life with those of death throughout "The Story of an Hour," Kate Chopin highlights the struggle of a person imprisoned by societal pressures and thereby kept from fully being alive. Chopin purposefully kills Brently Mallard and makes her character Louise Mallard full with live and happiness. Louise Mallard expresses this when she says, "Free! Body and soul free!". Ironically her character Brently Mallard never died and Louise Mallard, filled with joy and life, ended up dying due to the fact of her husbands existence