Chopin\'s Life. Kate Chopin Wrote for Women

¶ … Chopin's life. Kate Chopin wrote for women at a time when women were to be "seen and not heard." She wrote of their lives, their fears, and the secrets that they kept from everyone but themselves. He stories still touch women today, because they bring out the underlying emotions so common in everyday events.

After being sent off to boarding school at the tender age of five, partly for her defiant and inquisitive attitude, Kate Chopin grew up in a house of strong women who were dominated by her equally strong and opinionated father, Thomas O'Flaherty. However, her father was killed in a train crash, just as Mrs. Mallard's husband's supposed fate in "The Story of an Hour." When her father died, she returned home. One biographer notes, "in real life, the crash that killed Thomas O'Flaherty liberated his daughter to come home, to be raised among the powerful women of her family. Her father's death kept Kate O'Flaherty from growing up in the typical nineteenth-century patriarchal household, in which a powerful husband ruled the roost" (Toth 10-11). Thus, Chopin knew liberation and freedom by the age of six, and chose to write eloquently about it later in her short story, "The Story of an Hour."

Like most of Chopin's works, this short story tells the tale of a woman with troubles. Kate often thought about the weight placed on her mother after her father died. Historian Toth continues, "Her most obvious musing takes place in 'The Story of an Hour,' written nearly forty years after the Gasconade [train crash that killed her father]" (Toth 10). Thus, Chopin's work reflect changes and thoughts about her own life, even if she disguises them and sets them in differing locales with divergent characters. There is a piece of Chopin in all she writes, and perhaps even more so in "The Story of an Hour."

This short story focuses on Mrs. Mallard, a married woman with "heart trouble." Afraid of her reaction, her sister Josephine breaks the news to her that her husband has been killed in a train wreck. At first, Mrs. Mallard grieves, as just about any woman would. Chopin writes, "She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms (Chopin 13). But then, she begins to realize the true implications of her husband's death. She realizes she will live alone, but as she contemplates the future, she also begins to realize she has gained something quite precious, her freedom. Chopin continues, "There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature" (Chopin 13). While the words refer to the newly widowed Mrs. Mallard, they could just as easily have referred to Chopin's own early liberation from the boarding school after her father's death. Free to create her own life with her mother and other female relatives, she immediately recognized the liberating value of no male in the home. Her feelings may not have been fresh when she wrote this story, but it is clear that her experience led this story in many ways.

Chopin's experience with her father is clear in nearly every sentence of this story. Later, Mrs. Mallard thinks "And yet she had loved him - sometimes. Often she had not" (Chopin 14). While Chopin herself was married, and had lost her husband, most people believe this story relates not to her own marriage, which by all accounts was happy and fulfilled. However, Chopin's early life was heavily influenced by her father, and it is clear this lasted long into her adulthood. Biographer Toth notes, "But if young Kate's father, irritated by her chatter or her defiant curiosity, was the one who sent her to boarding school at age five -then 'The Story of an Hour' is also the tale of her own liberation" (Toth 10). In addition to telling her own compelling story, this short story also struck a chord with many women at the time it was written (just before the turn of the 20th century). Women were still second-class citizens, who lived under the thumb of the men in their lives. The men worked outside the home, had male friends, and socialized, while the women took care of the home, oversaw the servants if they had any, and generally kept themselves busy with a myriad of household tasks. They had little chance to work outside the home or create gratifying and fulfilling lives for themselves. Chopin was an exception, because she wrote for a living, and attempted to support herself and her family after her husband died with her writing. Toth notes, "She would earn money from her work, and she would be written about, and promoted and criticized, just as men were" (Toth 121-122). Chopin's life was different than most other women of the time, and so were the lives of the women she wrote about. She wrote about strong women like her mother and her grandmother, who had the courage to step out on their own, or at least question the influence men had on their lives. Unfortunately, Chopin still had to modify her stories to please mostly male editors, so she often had to change events to meet guidelines, as she did in this short story. In the end, Mrs. Mallard finds out her husband is not really dead, and she dies of a heart attack. In life, Chopin's mother administered the estate of Thomas O'Flaherty, and lived a fulfilling and very happy life. Chopin could not write about that, it would have been "unsettling" to most women, and so, she modified the ending to make it sadder and more "believable" to readers. However, Chopin's work reveals the great influence the lives of others often have on writers. Her family gave her fodder for much of her writing, and the women in her family gave her the strength and courage to write for a living.