Mallard” who seems to be unhappy in her marriage. She was a woman afflicted with heart trouble (Chopin, 1894, para. 1). Her bad heart seems to come from a life filled with sadness and living for a man and not for her. She seems to be relieved when she hears of her husband’s death.
Reading her poem about preferring to be isolated quickly transited to being a lot more depressing in her latter poems. “I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain” shows a darker side to Dickinson’s writing. “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,/ And Mourners to and fro “ (1-2). Dickinson writes about a funeral and describes it as if it were her own. Her dark tone speaking of death lead her literary mentor Thomas Higginson to “ advise her not to publish her work because of her violation of contemporary literary convention” (Dickinson 1).
The numbness and non-reaction of Mrs Mallard, when she heard the news of her husband’s death shows the conflict with her husband. Somehow this conflict shows the desire of emancipation. Such as, “She didn’t hear the story as many women have heard the same, with Paralyzed inability to accept its significance” (paragraph 3). As one reads this, one immediately begins to think there is something else going on with Mrs Mallard rather than grief. It’s hard to fathom that someone would feel anything other than grief after being told that one’s husband is dead.
Samuel Irving Bellman is one among many of the critics who have mixed emotions about the story. After first reading the novel in 1943, Bellman found it to be flat, unappealing, and unimaginative. He felt the characters were lifeless and hard to imagine as players in a human drama. A major drawback of his is Wharton’s love-hate triangle between Ethan, Zeena, and Mattie. From a positive perspective, “Ethan Frome is important to Wharton’s canon because it represents her confident coming of age as an artist…It has gained its place as a masterpiece of American literature for its style: it is brilliant in its economy, clarity, and structure (Bellman).” Here, he is explaining that Ethan Frome deserves to be a classic for its style, although he is not personally fond of the book.
The story starts out by talking about Miss Emily Grierson’s funeral. Readers will most often sympathize with a character if the author provides a sense of vulnerability, such as death. Further on in the story, we find out Emily’s father had passed away and her sweetheart had left her. Furthermore, the townspeople are always complaining about the smell of Miss Emily’s house. Judge Stevens says to one of the townspeople, “’will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?’” (545), which provides the reader with even more sympathy than before.
Mitch one of Stanley’s good friends and has a crush on Blanche has a sick and elderly mother, so doesn’t have a lot of time to spend time with his friends. Mitch says “I like you to be exactly the way that you are, because in all my-experiences I have never known anyone like you.” (Williams, s.6,103). This scene Mitch and Blanche open to each other, Blanche tells him about how her husband died. Mitch tells Blanche he is also alone to help ease her, Mitch thinks that he has found his soul mate. Blanche is using Mitch to get that chivalry out of him, and to overcome her loneliness.
This word helps the reader to identify the speaker’s emotional standpoint of the separation. One can assume he feels as if his ex-lover has ripped his heart apart from hers. In the last line of the first stanza, “truly that hour foretold sorrow to this,” the speaker shows the readers that the pain and grief he feels in the moment of their separation does not ease with time. The feelings he felt in the moment of separation was just foreshadowing the greater sorrow the speaker would feel later on. In the second stanza, it describes the speaker’s atmosphere as being cold.
The narrator’s words give a great portrayal of the relationship between the false news and how Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts formed. The narrator explained how she didn’t take the news in the manner that others did, she was unable to grasp its terrifying impact. Then later explains how Mrs. Mallard tried to fight it but then embraced the excitement she was having about her husband’s death and what was to come for her (Chopin, 2011, para. 3 and para. 10-11).
The Joy That Kills "The Story of an Hour" written in 1894 by Kate Chopin lives up to its name. It is a short story which raised lots of controversy after it was first published. This was because it revolved around a female protagonist who is relieved upon learning that her husband was dead. This raised heated debates in the 1890's. Kate Chopin uses tells her story while employing several motifs.
In modern society, men and women are both well respected and treated equally. Men and women both have a chance to a good education or job opportunity in order to support their family. Women, on the other hand, were to stay at home to take care of the children, clean the house, and cook for their family. In the novel, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Edna Pontellier's unhappiness, greed, and society's expectations throughout her life have led her to commit suicide and this is reinforced in Virginia Woolf's essay, "Professions for Women". Many people feel that by pleasing others they become happy themselves, but what they do not know is that it can lead to unhappiness.