A Respectable Woman By Kate Chopin Analysis

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Applying the Gender/Feminist Theory to Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and “A Respectable Woman”
Part 1
Kate Chopin, also called Catherine O’Flaherty, was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1850. At the age of five years, Thomas O’Flaherty, Chopin’s father died in a railroad accident. Thomas was a successful Irish businessperson. For this reason, Kate grew in a family dominated by females, including her mother, Eliza Faris, grandmother, women slaves owned by her mother, and Victoire Charleville, her great-grandmother. The young girl learned many things from her great-grandmother, who spent time teaching her French and playing the piano. She was also told stories pertaining to how her great-great-grandmother divorced her husband and operated businesses on her own. As such, Chopin learned that a strong woman is the one who can live independently without getting married and operate businesses or pursue her passion in life. Chopin’s childhood and her experiences as a mother and wife shaped her career in fictional writing. That is the reason why “Her characters survived unhappy marriages and spoke to each other uncivilly when angry, but they also cherished their children and loved with abandon” (Larrabee 57). After the death of Chopin’s father, Faris was left to manage a large estate, and she never remarried since widows were highly respected, had freedom, and Kate’s mother was financially stable. After graduating from St. Louis Academy of Sacred Heart, Chopin was married to Oscar Chopin in 1870 in Louisiana. The couple migrated to New Orleans, and Oscar worked as a commission agent and a cotton seller and buyer. Unlike many married women, Kate enjoyed her marriage. From 1871-1879, Oscar and Kate were blessed with six children. However, Oscar died in 1882 after developing malaria.
Chopin started writing fictional stories and poems in 1888 after she was encouraged by her friends, one of them being Dr. Frederick Kol-benheyer, who assisted her in delivering two children (Larrabee 61). Both “The Story of an Hour” and “A Respectable Woman” by Chopin were set in the 1890s. Specifically, they were first published in 1894 when male chauvinism in marriages was a common thing. The author came up with these short stories by reflecting on what was happening in society. Moreover, having been married for over a decade, Chopin understood very well the challenges that women went through in marriages. “A Respectable Woman” and “The Story of an Hour” portray married females who are yearning to be free. Indeed, it appears that women did everything to please their husbands, and society expected them to fulfill men’s needs. In the 18th century, the duties of males were to provide necessities for their families. For instance, before Oscar died in 1882, the individual had been working hard to feed his family. In other words, his wife and children depended on him solely. After he died, Chopin had to operate the store left by her husband alone to provide for her family. However, things were tough for her, and she decided to return home, where her mother welcomed her warmly. From this experience, it is evident that men played significant roles despite the fact that they overruled women in marriages. In “The Story of an Hour” and “A Respectable Woman,” applying the critical lens of feminist and gender theory reveals the theme of how women lived under the high pressure because of the limit from their men or husbands, and how they chose to fight for their rights.
Part 2
Daniel Deneau’s “Chopin’s ‘The Story of an Hour’” criticizes Chopin’s narrative. At some point, the author says, “And, as more sophisticated readers may ask, is the degree of ‘self-assertion’ or freedom that she thinks she has attained a real possibility in a world of normal human relationships?” (Deneau 210). Here, Deneau perceives Chopin to have a skeptical imagination of women’s freedom in marriages, which is unattainable. Based on her perception, females got freedom when their husbands died. In that case, it means that these individuals would do whatever they wanted without being asked any question by anyone. However, proper human relationships cannot occur without establishing some rules that should be strictly followed between the parties involved.
Jennifer Hicks portrays that Mrs. Mallard was eager to be free in a patriarchal society where women were considered to be weak. In particular, the author makes it clear that Mrs. Mallard was skeptical, and she did not understand how to live with the freedom she got after knowing that her husband was dead. Hicks asserts that “Indeed, if we take the last line of the story literally, we would understand that Mrs. Mallard was so enamored of her marriage to her husband that she died from the excitement of knowing he was still alive” (Hicks). As such, despite women’s excitement on getting freedom from marriages, they did not know how to live freely without depending on men.
Scott Emmert’s “Naturalism and the Short Story Form: Kate Chopin’s ‘The Story of an Hour’” depicts superb writing skills and dramatic plots that describe how familial and societal relationships imprisoned females. Women kept yearning for the freedom, which they only got when their husbands died. Emmert claims that “The desire to portray characters limited by forces beyond their control may in fact provide one explanation for Chopin’s interest in the short story, a form that is especially well suited to a depiction of confinement” (Emmert 75). On that note, Chopin portrays the suppression of females by males in marriages as the lack of freedom. Nevertheless, the patriarchal society supported this kind of familial structure, and females knew what they were getting themselves into when they got married.
All the literary critics discussed above have one thing in common, which is the lack of women’s freedom in marriages during the 1890s. However, they differ in that some of them show that the patriarchal society contributed to female suppression in marriages, while others depict that women did not have an idea of how to utilize the freedom they were seeking in the absence of men around them. Overall, critics’ arguments emphasize the theme of how females lived under the pressure of men since they were not independent.
The three literary articles connect with the thesis statement of the paper. First, they focus on issues affecting women in marriages using feminist or gender theory. For example, the patriarchal society of the 1890s hindered women from having freedom in marriages since they were treated like mere objects by men (Oldbaileyonline.org). Second, these articles discuss various concepts such as freedom, marriage, epiphany, rebellion, and repression. Third, they reveal that although females wanted to be free in their marriages, they were not only limited by males but also the patriarchal society.
Part 3
In the 1890s, women were living under the ...