The Relation To The Author’s Personal Life: "The Story Of An Hour" By Kate Chopin

The first part of how the story relates to Chopin’s life is to look at the story’s setting. This story takes place in 1894 and is about the events that happen in a certain hour of Mrs. Mallard’s life. For the duration of the story, we are in Mrs. Mallard’s house. As the story tells us, the news of her husband’s death is broken to her in an unknown location of her house, and then she goes to her room. Mrs. Mallard’s room includes a comfortable armchair and an open window where she can see “the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life” (Chopin 128). The last place we are in the story is at the bottom of a staircase in front of the front door of the house (Chopin 129). Mrs. Mallard was waiting for her husband to come home to her, just like many women at that time were supposed to do. After she learns of her husband’s death, she realizes that she is not confined to her house anymore. This describes the setting of “The Story of an Hour. ”

Secondly, the society of America in 1894, when the story was set, was a difficult time for women. At this time in history females were trying to become more than housewives, but they weren’t being accepted in these new roles. Alan Brinkley, a textbook author, mentions that an outstanding feature of the time is the number of women that are interested in reforming the times. Women during this time were interested in voting rights and being involved in public and political life (556). Brinkley also says that many women in this time were left out of the new professions because of laws, partiality, and traditions previously put in place (555). This basically means that females wanting to go into the workforce were not accepted there. The women’s rights movement we hear about the most is the suffrage movement, because men had the right to vote for a long time, but womenfolk realized they had just as an important role in society as men. Society at this time was changing because females were also realizing the controlling nature men had on them. In this story, Mrs. Mallard realizes that because of her husband’s death, she is free to do as she wishes instead of what her husband wants to do. Society around this time was certainly changing.

Thirdly, we have to look at Chopin’s life in order to prove it is similar to the story. According to an article, in 1851 Chopin was born to an important family in the St. Louis community and she passed away in 1904 from a cerebral hemorrhage (“Katherine Chopin”). This means that she published the story 10 years before she died. Also, according to the article mentioned above, Chopin was compelled to dive deeply into literature by the deaths she experienced in her young life, her father, great-grandmother, and half-brother. As Chopin enjoyed life in St. Louis in high standing, she broadened her interests to include classics, contemporaries, and music. Chopin later married Oscar Chopin and they moved to New Orleans where Oscar began a career in helping cotton planation owners. In New Orleans, Chopin raised her family and still pursued interests in arts. In 1883 Oscar Chopin passed away from swamp fever. Chopin moved back to St. Louis with her children because her mother requested her to. After the deaths of her husband and her mother, Chopin began writing consistently. Chopin began writing about issues in society that dealt with the way women were being treated, much like the story saying something about the way women were treated (“Katherine Chopin”). An example from the story is, “this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being” (Chopin 129). These details about Chopin’s life certainly show similarity to “The Story of an Hour. ”

The final part of this is that Chopin’s life does relate to the story. I think this because, as author Bert Bender says, “Kate Chopin’s dreams of freedom, like those of Dunbar and Chesnutt, provide the lyrical impulse in her fiction” (80). This means that just like the character, Mrs. Mallard, Chopin wants to be free from the controlling nature of society at the time. “The Story of an Hour” proves this because after Mrs. Mallard has wept for her husband’s death, she realizes, “There would be no powerful will bending her in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature” (Chopin 129). Mrs. Mallard realizes that she could live for herself now, she doesn’t have someone controlling her every move. Another way to look at marriage is from what the author Scott Emmert says about it, one of the foundations of marriage is that it traps women inside itself (56). Also, according to Emmert when it comes to the social aspects of a married lady’s life, there are strict codes that must be followed that were set by males, giving them more power (57). This was a popular approach in society at this time. Bender also tells us that when Chopin initially took “The Story of an Hour” to an influential editor, R. W. Glider, it was rejected because Mrs. Mallard had a nontraditional state of mind about her place in a marriage (79).