Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"

Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"

Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour," is the story of a lady, Mrs. Mallard, discovering that her husband is "dead." Because of her heart condition, her friends delayed telling her of her husbands death, in fear of upsetting her enough to kill her. Instead Mrs. Mallard's sister hinted at the death of her husband, Brently Mallard, until one bright, spring day, when the world around Mrs. Mallard seemed happy and prefect, Mrs. Mallard felt that something ominous was going to happen. Finally her sister told her, and after pondering the idea, Mrs. Mallard was happy and began to rejoice her new found "freedom." Mrs. Mallard then went insane and died from her heart condition, "the joy that kills," and then her husband returned home, not having died, not knowing what had happened.

"The Story of an Hour" relates with "The Yellow Wall-Paper" in their goals of the wives. In the "Yellow Wall-Paper," the wife is suppressed by the demands and treatments of her husband, and in "The Story of an Hour," the wife does not care for her husband but instead feels held down by her husband. Both wives find some way out of their "husband-created bondage," through different means, but arrive at the similar results. In "The Yellow Wall-Paper," the wife goes insane and escapes her bondage through "escaping into the wallpaper" In "The Story of an Hour," the wife escapes her bondage through the "death" of her husband. Upon being "released" from bondage, both women become extremely happy. Ironically both women are also likely dead at the end of their stories.

What drives these women to act is such a manner as to try to turn against their husbands? Is it a sense of natural mistreatment, or is there something wrong in the society itself?