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This text is useful in discussing a historical basis for the play. Unlike Nora in A Doll's House, Laura was not able to separate herself from her family. She needed to be a mother but Nora was more interested in becoming a fully-developed human being than in motherhood.

Zhuo, Liu. "The Epiphany of Woman's Consciousness: a Reading of Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour." Journal of Northeastern University (2004). Web. The article discusses the importance of a woman's self-actualization. The argument is that not only is the woman in the story the subject of infantilizing by her husband but so too are all women in the American landscape at the time the story is written.

This is also Nora's problem in Ibsen's A Doll's House. She is infantilized by her husband and comes to the point where she cannot allow this of herself anymore. In Chopin's story, the young woman only realizes what she has become when she learns that her husband is dead. It is a societal problem and that is why, ultimately, she cannot escape her sphere.