The Story of an Hour/Mother Savage

Formally known as Guy de (Henri René Albert) Maupassant, he was a French novelist and short-story writer. He is deemed one of the modern masters of the art of the short story and has influenced practitioners of that genre from his time to the present. (Guy de Maupassant Encarta Encyclopedia 2001. CD-ROM. Microsoft Electronic Publishing, 2001)

Maupassant did not grow up a natural writer; In fact he did not consider a literacy career until he was almost thirty years old. Before this, he studied law in Paris, but the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, which destroyed his family’s fortune and forced Maupassant to find work as a government office clerk, interrupted his studies. To divert himself from t

In 1855 on November 1, being one of the founders of the Pacific Railroad, her father was aboard the train on its inaugural journey over the Gasconade Bridge, which collapsed, killing many of its passengers. After only two months into her term at Sacred Heart, Kate came home and was to be educated by her great-grandmother. Eliza Faris O'Flaherty, Kate's mother, was a member of the prominent French-Creole community and a member of an exclusive social circle. Eliza was only 27 years old when she heard of her 50-year-old husbands' death. She may have been depressed, yet liberated by the news, or so Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour" suggests: "a wife, hearing of her husband's death in a train accident, delights in thoughts of freedom." (http://www.angelfire.com/nv/English243/Chopin.html)

In the time that Kate Chopin was growing from a child to a woman, there was an ongoing battle for women's rights. She was raised in a culture where many people were holding onto society and values the way they were, and yet many others were feeling there was need for change, that change being the Women's Right's Movement. It is unknown how Kate's mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother felt about this fight for women's rights, but one can assume that being the strong women they were, most likely they had very strong beliefs in women's rights as well. They had, after all, already been widowed and had been the "man" and the "woman" in the house for years. The O'Flaherty women had strong souls and they knew how to take care of themselves. Safely said, Kate Chopin had a strong desire to be her own woman. She would make her own rules. Having been raised and graduated from a very prestigious Catholic school, Kate was taught very strict values and guidelines. She doesn't seem to use those values when living her life, as one would see by her many affairs after her husband's death, one with a married man. Kate appears to be a woman filled with passion and desires; she went after what she wanted and she said what she thought, even when it was scandalous. Kate does not restrict herself to a certain way of acting, living, or writing, as is seen in the content of her stories and novels. In a time that it was not acceptable for women to speak out about sexuality and independence, Kate screams it in her writing. Her stories brought on many controversies and was not widely appreciated or accepted until many years after Kate's death. Kate Chopin leaves a legacy behind, though. Along with many very popular stories, her "unacceptable" literatures have now been published and are considered masterpieces. Chopin wrote of a time in the future where women had the freedom to write what they felt, but she did it in a time when it was unacceptable. Through her writing, Kate told a story of women's rights in their own. She fought this battle alone and it was Kate Chopin's boldness and courage, which left her to stand out among all others. (http://www.angelfire.com/nv/English243/Society.html)

As we can see by this family tragedy, Kate Chopin wrote this story as an expression of how she felt about women and women’s rights. She was also sharing what her grandmother felt as she lost her husband in a “railroad disaster.” Could this be a re-creation of her grandmothers situation?

Some topics in this essay:
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