Character analysis and comparison across narrative settings

¶ … Clever Manka' and 'The Story of an Hour', could readily be told by someone with a feminist agenda. The first depicts the intelligence of woman despite male attempts to conceal that intelligence from public knowledge. The second depicts woman's longing to be free that is belligerently misinterpreted by males as her desire to be married. Both essays depict males as construing woman to be dependent on males. Both authors, however, imply that woman has an autonomous self that is free of males and would be quite content and able to live an independent existence.

In 'Clever Manka', we have the plot of a maiden who helps both her father and her husband with her intelligence. Both men seek to deny that their wisdom came from the woman: "At first the shepherd tried not to tell, but when the burgomaster pressed him he confessed that they came from his daughter" (Fillmore, *). And later, the burgomaster himself is embarrassed that his wife had outsmarted him. Observe, too, that, all the while, he has actively excluded his wife from any of his business concerns and prohibited her involvement in his issues. The woman, he seems to imply, should be excluded from the business sphere

Furthermore, the greatest gift that the burgomaster can think of presenting the woman is his hand in marriage. Note: he does not consult her to see if she is willing to marry him. He treats her as an object and announces that if her physical attributes match those of her mental attributes, he would marry her. He, in other words, evaluates her objectively according to the assets that she possesses and treats her as one more article around his home, or as potential property of his, deciding whether or not to 'purchase' according to her physical properties.

Later, as penalty, he arbitrarily divorces her, again without consulting her considering that divorce from him is the worst punishment that he can accord the woman. He depersonalizes her and, in his egoism and selfishness, treats her again as object considering that he can embrace and renounce her whensoever he wishes. Manka, herself, is not taken into consideration.

In a similar way, Mrs. Mallard too, in 'The Story of an Hour," is considered by the men-folk to be only happy and content when she is married to a male. They deliberate about how to break the news of her husband's death to her in a way that would not kill her, and when she has her heart attack it is considered to be due to the insupportable joy of seeing her husband alive. The fact that Mrs. Mannard could well survive and flourish without her husband, and possibly even better than before, does not enter the male head. They would have been astonished, in fact, to discover that Mrs. Mannard's recovery from her sadness -- her triumph as the story describes it -- resulted from her overwhelming sensation that she was free:

Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long (Chopin,*)

She had a life ahead of her. More so, she was not particularly attached to her husband: "she had loved him -- sometimes. Often she had not" (ibid.)

No wonder that: "She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory" (ibid.). On the one hand, she had to convey mourning; on the other hand, she felt free.