Women's Identity and Freedom in Two Classic Short Stories
This paper examines the portrayal of women's identity, freedom, and discontent in two 19th-century short stories: Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" and Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace." Through close reading of each text, the paper explores how both authors use their female protagonists to critique the social institutions of marriage and class that suppressed women's individuality. Chopin's Mrs. Mallard discovers a fleeting sense of liberation upon learning of her husband's death, only to lose it tragically, while Maupassant's Madame Loisel is trapped by class distinctions and unfulfilled materialistic desires. Together, the stories illuminate the broader struggles women faced in asserting their identities during the late 19th century.
- Introduction: Women and Society in the 19th Century: Historical context of female subordination and literary revolt
- Female Identity in 'The Story of an Hour': How marriage erased women's individual identities
- Marriage as Bondage: Chopin's Critique: Mrs. Mallard's joy at freedom from marriage
- Irony and Mrs. Mallard's Fate: Dual meanings of heart trouble and tragic ending
- Madame Loisel and Class Consciousness in 'The Necklace': Class barriers and unfulfilled desires in Maupassant's heroine
- Conclusion: Both stories unite around women's desire for autonomy
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper draws a clear parallel between two different national literary traditions — American and French — to make a unified argument about women's oppression in 19th-century society.
- It uses textual evidence, including direct quotation with page references, to ground its literary analysis in the actual language of the primary sources.
- The use of irony as an analytical lens for Chopin's story is well chosen and helps explain how the narrative's structure reinforces its thematic message.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates comparative literary analysis: rather than treating each story in isolation, it reads them in dialogue, showing how authors from different cultural contexts arrived at similar critiques of gender and social constraint. The conclusion draws the two threads together by identifying shared themes — loss of identity in marriage and the desire for freedom — that unite Mrs. Mallard and Madame Loisel as representative 19th-century female figures.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with historical context about women's roles in the 19th century, then devotes two substantial sections to "The Story of an Hour," covering identity, marriage critique, and the irony of Mrs. Mallard's fate. A second block of sections analyzes Madame Loisel through the lens of class consciousness and social aspiration. A brief conclusion synthesizes the two analyses, highlighting the shared theme of female desire for autonomy and self-determination.
Introduction: Women and Society in the 19th Century
The 19th century is on record as a period when male dominance and authoritarianism were the order of the day. Women were mainly passive and subservient. However, towards the end of the century, women began questioning their assigned roles and responded to the ongoing battle of the sexes in a number of ways. They revolted and sought to change society's perspective. The "new woman" challenged the traditional model of femininity, and there emerged female-authored literature that addressed both exuberance and despair, bringing to the fore the dreams of victory alongside the reality of violence and defeat.
This tension is well illustrated in the fiction of Kate Chopin, one of the foremost American authors of the 19th century. According to literary critics Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, the oscillation between despair and extremes of exuberance is vividly depicted in Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" (Robinson). In order to fully understand Chopin's message, readers must envision the traditions of Victorian society in which she lived — a world that rigidly defined gender roles and left little room for female self-determination.
Female Identity in 'The Story of an Hour'
Chopin clearly outlines the importance of a woman's identity beyond her role as a man's wife (Robinson). In this story, she addresses female identity as it existed in 19th-century marriages. Women who married belonged, in a very real sense, to their husbands. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist is referred to as "Mrs. Mallard," and once her husband returns home she is referred to simply as "wife." Her own first name is not revealed until late in the narrative — only after her husband is believed dead and she is temporarily free from the bondage of marriage.
During this period, a woman assumed the social identity of her husband upon marriage and became, in effect, his property. Women often did not recognize how much of themselves they surrendered in marrying, even when they were loved by their husbands (Eportfolio). Looking at Louise Mallard, Chopin uses a woman who suddenly discovers a new life following her husband's death. Ironically, the author depicts Louise's sense of independence as a doomed fantasy, because such freedom was genuinely unrealistic for a woman of the 19th century.
Marriage as Bondage: Chopin's Critique
According to Chopin, women of the 19th century were rarely happy in their marriages because they felt that marriage functioned like a cage, leading to the loss of freedom. They were subject to their husbands' instructions and expected to obey without question. Mrs. Mallard felt she had been caged by her husband. Chopin suggests that Mrs. Mallard viewed marriage as an institution with a cruel intention — little less than a crime against the self. When Louise learns of her husband's death, she becomes happy, because she has attained both psychological and physical freedom (Eportfolio).
"The Story of an Hour" offers a striking portrait of women's identities and their struggles within late 19th-century marriages. Women who married had to surrender their freedom to what Chopin frames as a cage. Chopin uses Mrs. Mallard as an example to illustrate how women lived unhappily in their marriages — depressed and leading miserable lives. All they could hope for was that one day they would gain the freedom to fight and win against male chauvinism and dominance (Eportfolio).
Conclusion
Both authors highlight the unhappiness of women in marriage, explaining how they lost their identity once they wed. Mrs. Mallard, after her husband's death, gains physical and psychological freedom, but when she learns he is alive, she dies of a heart attack. The thought of surrendering the freedom she believed was now hers forever was unbearable — she wanted to live as she chose, without dependence on a man. Similarly, Madame Loisel wants to live life on her own terms and according to her own desires. She is constrained both by her social class and by the modest clerk she marries, who cannot satisfy her material aspirations.
Together, both stories illustrate how a woman's desire to be free — and, in Loisel's case, to be financially secure — can prove more powerful than the expectation that she simply tend to her home and accept her circumstances. Both protagonists are, in their different ways, casualties of the social structures that governed women's lives in the 19th century.
Bibliography
Berkove, Lawrence L. "Fatal Self-Assertion in Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour.'" American Literary Realism 32.2 (2000): 152–158. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 Sept. 2008.
Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." The Story and Its Writer. Ed. Ann Charters. 7th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. 153, 159–160.
Eportfolio. "The Female's Role in 'The Story of an Hour.'" (n.d.). Retrieved from: www.eportfolio.lagcc.cuny.edu/scholars/doc.../eng102_research.doc
Fonseka, Gamini. "The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant: A Critique of Class Consciousness." (n.d.).
Robinson, Chris. "Female Identity in Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour.'" Macmillan Learning. (2001). Retrieved from:
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