Her Internal Conflict- A Response to "The Story of an Hour"

Kate Chopin's visionary short story walks you into a sense of reluctance and internal conflict within the mind of a woman torn by her social constraints-- all stemming from the death of a husband. "The Story of an Hour" weaves through the conflicted emotions of a woman living in the early stages of feminism. Now, this topic of feminism has always been quite interesting to me-- its origins, its historical impact, and how exactly has the feminist movement been received-- both from women and the world. Miss Mallard seems to be enthralled by the idea of pursuing and leading a more individualized life. 

Miss Mallard is at odds with how she is supposed to feel, how she's supposed to act in accordance to the expectations laid upon a widow. But her inner desire to be freed from that structured facade leads her to feel differently. The line we walk-- that is, the plot-- we witness Miss Mallard being exorcised out of that false preset by the wish and dream of being her own person. Her realization that the death of her husband meant absolute liberation from the sequestering that was marriage for a woman in her age, it processed physically like a liberation. My favorite line was "What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!"

In such an early time in history, for a woman to hold such thoughts must of felt just as frightening as it might've felt exhilarating. I feel as though this story was an expression of how the idea of feminism must have been handled in the mind of a woman in that time. Although it can be quite true that even today there are woman who do not feel as though self-assertion is natural due to the societies they belong. To read this short story is to get a glimpse of what that brilliant taste of realization must feel like for a woman wanting liberation.