Stereotypes In The Story Of An Hour

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In Kate Chopin’s short story, “The Story of an Hour” the plot takes place between the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s. The time period in which this story is In Kate Chopin’s short story, “The Story of an Hour” the plot takes place between the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s. In the time period in which the plot of this story took place women were viewed as inferior to men and did not have the social status as men did. Some of the facilities that women were not given access to were voting rights and ability to marry someone that truly made them happy and making their own choices after marriage. From the 1891 to 1897 the divorce rate in the United States was just 6%. Kate Chopin represents a woman who is a victim of society’s stereotype of…show more content…
Mallard the wife was affected with a heart problem, “Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble” (Paragraph 1 pg. 161) to portray that women are weaker than men. Furthermore, Mrs. Mallard obeys the stereotypical view of a women by grieving and crying as soon as she heard about her husband’s death as said by Kate Chopin, “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sisters arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.” (Paragraph 3 pg.…show more content…
They were not supposed to continue their ordinary lives and were not supposed to attend parties and other social occasions. She was supposed to slowly progress back into ordinary life. However, after Mrs. Mallard was finished with what a woman would stereotypically do and think she started thinking radically about the event regarding her husband’s death. She looked at her new found freedom from her husband which very few woman had back then. Kate Chopin describes her new found through metaphors, “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of tree that were all aquiver with new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the
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