The ideology of marriage is for a man and a woman to commit to each other as husband and wife. This union that is ideally the spawn of love and the desire of the couple to spend the rest of their lives together not only in body, but in spirit as well; "till death do us part." In Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" and "The Storm" marriage is a farce- a show, a matter of matrimonial obligation that causes psychological and emotional repression.
In "The Story of an Hour" Mrs. Mallard is a faithful, yet repressed wife. When she hears about her husband's death she is initially overcome with grief. She is distraught by her loss, distraught-until she realizes that by his death she has actually gained. "She would live for herself." (Chopin 13). She is no longer subjected to her husbands will and she sees herself as "free! Body and soul free!" (Chopin 14) The male oppressor, though "she had loved him-sometimes," (Chopin 14), is now dead giving her the freedom to live her life any way she sees fit.
In "The Storm," Calixta, an efficient and loyal homemaker, has an affair with an old flame. Despite the fact that she loves her husband and son, she is over taken by her bottled-up passion. Her intimate desire is to be swept off her feet by a man, a real man, unlike her husband who is likened to an ignorant child. Alcee and Calixta make passionate love and when the storm passes, they continue on with their lives with out any feelings of guilt or remorse.
When Alcee writes a loving letter to his wife Clarisse, telling her "not to hurry back because their health and pleasure are his top priority," (Chopin 35), she is relieved. .
Clarisse is going through a storm of her own and reliving her "maiden days" (Chopin 35) which is like "the first free-breath of fresh air since their marriage." (Chopin 35).
However devoted the spouses are to the "marriage," that devotion is only skin-deep; a facade that is concerned only with the outward and physical presentation, not the actual content.
