The Awakening and The Story of an Hour

Kate Chopin was a very strong advocate of women’s rights and the first person, woman or otherwise, to write about the frustration women felt in being confined to the traditional roles of mothers and wives. She was known as a Realist for this reason because she used these frustrations as the psychology behind the female protagonists of her short stories and novels, which allowed her readers, mostly women, to sympathize with these protagonists because they too had felt the same exact feelings of confinement and longing for freedom without knowing why. The fact that women’s rights was becoming an issue of the time as well makes Kate Chopin’s work relevant to society, giving it even more of a Realist feel to it.

The main reason, though, as it was said, as to why Chopin’s works are Realist is her use of human psychology in her writing to connect with her female audience. Take, for example, this excerpt from her novel, The Awakening:

“An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul’s summer day. It was strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood. She did not sit there inwardly upbraiding her husband, lamenting at Fate, which had directed her footsteps to the path they had taken. She was just having a good cry all to herself” (Chopin “The Awakening” 491).

It is obvious that the woman sitting here crying is feeling indirectly oppressed by the fact that she had to become a wife and mother and that she could not have any other choice besides that. This would strike a chord with many other female readers who were bound to feel the same way, and it would also excite social change since the women’s rights movement had begun to pick up speed and momentum at that point in time. Therefore, not only would Kate Chopin’s novel help those anguished housewives identify their feelings, but it would also bring about change. This is how the novel would become a member of the Realism family because it was so very relevant to its current events.

Another works of Chopin’s, a short story called, “The Story of an Hour,” reflects similar themes. It is about a wife who is told her husband has died in a railroad accident, and her reaction, which is this:

“When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: ‘free, free, free!’ The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body” (Chopin “The Story” 554).

The woman experiences freedom from the oppression and is overjoyed, but within the hour she comes face to face with her husband, actually alive, and dies from a heart attack at the sudden loss of this freedom (Chopin “The Story“ 554). Again, Chopin reveals the true nature of the anguish found in many housewives and provides a link between the female audience and the protagonist, and it is this link that makes her distinctly Realist.

Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. GlencoeLiterature. Ed. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill, 2009. 491. Print.

Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." GlencoeLiterature. Ed. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill, 2009. 554-55. Print.