Analysis of Short Stories by Kate Chopin

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Kate Chopin was an author who was underappreciated by those in her generation. Much of this was due to the fact that she was a contemporary author, who primarily wrote about women's sexuality and their roles in the world. Two prime examples of this writing style are her short stories The Story of an Hour and Desiree's Baby. While these two works do share some similarities there are also vast differences and a few parallels from Chopin's own life. A brief look into the settings and themes of the two stories along with Chopin's biographical information aid in portraying this.

The actual settings of The Story of an Hour and Desiree's Baby are the first instance where the two stories differ. In The Story of an Hour, the entire piece takes place in Mrs. Mallard's home or the scenery outside the house. In fact, the outside scenery plays an important role to the story, paralleling the new spring with Mrs. Mallard's new found freedom. Where as the inside of the house does not play as major of a role, not even revealing what room Mrs. Mallard was in when she was notified of her husband's passing (Hicks, ). In Desiree's Baby, the main factors of the setting include the Louisiana Bayou, the gates of Valmonde mansion, and L'Abri, a vastly larger group of settings than the prior. As in The Story of an Hour, one setting is described more clearly and most of the story takes place there, L'Abri. The homestead is described as making Madame Valmonde shudder at the first site of it and it being a sad looking place…..Big solemn oaks…branches shadowed it like a pall (Chopin, 1). The description of L'Abri foreshadowed events to come and symbolized the relationship of Armand and Desiree. Even though the two stories do not share a setting you can see the similarities that there is some obscure background with one major setting paralleling the main character in some way. This, in part, could be due to Chopin wanting to have a writing style of her own, but I also think the storyline the two main characters, Mrs. Mallard and Desiree, benefited from concentrating on the one main setting. Largely, because this setting was a reason of conflict in the characters' lives.

In the same way that the settings shared likenesses and differences, the plot and theme of the two stories also do. The plots of The Story of an Hour and Desiree's Baby obviously have to be different for the most part. In The Story of an Hour, the plot is a woman who finds out her husband is dead and after an initial shock, she feels free to finally live her life. However, when she has finally come to grips with all of the events and looking forward to her new life, her husband comes in and she dies of shock and a pre-existing heart condition (Chopin, 77-7). In Desiree's Baby, the plot involves a woman named Desiree. As a child she was abandoned, and taken in by the Valmondes, but as a woman fell in love with Armand, a wealthy plantation owner. They get married and have a baby together, and after a short lived bliss come to find that the baby has African American heritage. Armand turns against Desiree, assuming she is the one with African blood in her. As the story goes on, Desiree kills herself and the baby, only for Armand to find out he is the one who actually has African heritage (Chopin, 1-5). These two plots at first glance do not seem to share anything in common, there is one gleaming through, the women's relationships with their husbands. Both women do love their husbands, but the relationships are not on an equal level. In each case the woman is looked upon as a possession. Mrs. Mallard's thoughts were There would be no powerful will bending her. She openly felt controlled, while Desiree did not seem to care about the controlling attitude on Armand, which is shown in the line When he frowned she trembled, but loved him (Chopin, ). While it is evident that the plots are for the most part different, one woman relishing the loss of a husband, and the other so fearing abandonment from hers that she kills herself, the themes are quite similar. The theme of the two stories, also shared with many other works by Chopin, is women in search of themselves (Korb, 1). Mrs. Mallard, from The Story of an Hour, can see her life finally beginning after the death of her husband, as illustrated by the line Free! Body and soul free! (Chopin, 7). She was looking forward to a life by herself, getting to know herself as an individual. Desiree, on the other hand, was searching for an identity, or herself, from the beginning when Monsieur Valmonde found her at the gate. While the Valmondes did take her in she did not feel like she had an actual identity until Armand gave her his name and she became his wife (Korb, 1-). After it became evident that the baby had black blood, and the identity she had as Armand's wife was taken away, she could not handle the idea of finding a new identity. Another similarity shared by Mrs. Mallard and Desiree is their death, in both instances provoked by their husbands. The similarities and differences are important because while people might be experiencing the same thing in real life, their attitudes towards it may not be the same along with the outcomes, which could have been a goal of the author's.

As stated earlier, many of Chopin's works concentrate on women trying to find themselves, and in these two cases after the ending of their relationships with their husbands. When reading the biography of Chopin, there is a striking similarity with The Story of an Hour and Desiree's Baby in particular. Kate O'Flaherty met and wed a man named Oscar Chopin around 186. She lived a happy life with him and had five children. This was to be a short lived happiness though, when Kate was only thirty-six year old, her husband died of swamp fever. While she loved her husband dearly, it is believed that she only first begun writing after her husband's death (Kirszner & Mandell, 77). In a way this resembles the way that Mrs. Mallard only thought her life was beginning after her husband's death. On the other hand, she could have been portraying her sense of abandonment by her husband in Desiree's character in Desiree's Baby. Another reason Chopin writes her characters only release as death is because of the time period she lived in. Divorce was often unheard of or taboo.

In conclusion, while two completely different stories, The Story of an Hour and Desiree's Baby do share quite a few similarities. A major one being their overall themes of women trying to find themselves, but one of the main differences being the way that each of the women traveled the path to self discovery and their outcomes. This in a large part could be from Chopin's own marriage and life.

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