Kate Chopin
American Author
Key Facts
Life
•Born 1850 (St. Louis, Missouri, USA)
•Died 1904 (St. Louis, Missouri, USA)
Genre
•Novel
•Short Story
School (type)
•Feminism
•Realism
Themes
• Many focus on themes related to women's
search for selfhood, for self-discovery or identity.
• Many also focus on women's revolt against
conformity, often against gender conformity or
against social norms that limit women's
possibilities in life.
• Others write about women's understanding of
feminine sexuality or women's experience of
motherhood, pregnancy, or childbirth.
Major Works
"The Storm"
"At the 'Cadian Ball" (prequel to "The
Storm")
"The Story of an Hour"
"Désirée's Baby"
"A Pair of Silk Stockings"
"A Respectable Woman"
"Athénaïse"
"Beyond the Bayou" (a children's
story)
"A No-Account Creole" (Chopin's first
short story)
"Lilacs"
"Fedora"
"A Point at Issue!" (an early Chopin
short story)
"Madame Célestin's Divorce"
"Ripe Figs" (a children's story)
"Her Letters" (now being filmed)
“The Story of an Hour”
The Unities
• Events take place in a single day.
• Events take place in a single location
• Events take place as a part of a single story line with
no subplots.
“The Story of an Hour”
Setting
• Place - The Mallard home
• Time - One hour
• Weather conditions – After a
light shower (rain) in the spring
• Social conditions – During the
Victorian age (1837-1901), women
could not vote, and married women
could not own or control their own
property. Although women’s roles
began to change during this time,
Tennyson’s poem The Princess best
describes the traditional view of their
role and nature:
Man for the field and woman for the hearth:
Man for the sword and for the needle she:
Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey.
• Mood – Dark at first and then light
“The Story of an Hour”
Characters
1. Louise Mallard – the protagonist (a
young, attractive woman who
mourns the reported death of her
husband but exults in the freedom
she will enjoy in the years to come)
2. Brently Mallard – Louise Mallard’s
husband
3. Josephine – Louise Mallard’s sister
4. Richards – a friend of Brently
Mallard
5. Doctors – Physicians who arrive too
late to save Louise Mallard