Kate Chopin \"The Story Hour\" 1) What

¶ … Kate Chopin "The Story Hour" 1) what impact story? 2) What? 3) What questions? 4)…. ID

Summarize short stories by Kate Chopin

"The Story of an Hour"

In this story, the protagonist Mrs. Mallard is mistakenly informed that her husband died in a railway accident. Her first impulse, after being stunned by the shock of the event, is to celebrate that she is free. Like so many women of her class during the Victorian Era, Mrs. Mallard has led a sheltered life. This has been particularly true for her since she has a weak heart. Now that her husband is dead, she realizes she is free to do as she pleases. However, when it is discovered that her husband was actually not in the train accident because he missed the train he was supposed to take, his wife is so shocked by the sight of him coming home she falls down dead. Ironically, she is said to have died of the joy that kills, but the reader knows that her shock has a far more ambiguous nature. Mrs. Mallard does not hate her husband, but she hates the social strictures that force her into a relationship with a man that prevent her from exercising her autonomy. The story is powerful because it shows the ambiguity of feelings that can exist between a husband and wife, particularly in a society that renders women the 'property' of men and tries to protect them from themselves, including their desire to live their own lives.

"Desiree's Baby"

"Desiree's Baby" highlights the racial prejudices endemic to Louisiana society at the time when Chopin wrote. Desiree is a woman of unknown origin, adopted when she was a baby by a respectable family. Eventually, she has a child with Armand, who is also from a prominent family. However, it soon becomes clear that the child of their union is multiracial in nature. Armand assumes that Desiree's true heritage has some African blood in it, and he casts her off, given that blacks were regarded as inferior. Desiree leaves Armand, and Armand destroys all of her belongings, but in doing so he discovers that he is partially black, which means that the child's color is likely due to his skin tone (although there is still a possibility that Desiree is of mixed heritage). The end is ambiguous -- could Armand really have had no idea, for all of these years that he was partially African? Did his extreme discomfort with the skin color of his child have roots in self-hatred? These questions are left unanswered, which contribute to the effective realism of the story. There is no definite conclusion, only the suggestion of more secrets, in keeping with the shadowy way race relations were regarded during the era.

"The Storm"