Kate Chopin Story Of An Hour Repression

Professor Martin ENGL 1302 23 Nov. 2010 Kate Chopin Repression and Freedom Freedom is a concept that holds different meanings for different people. For a woman of today, it could mean having the ability to engage in hobbies and interests that give her an individual identity. She would also expect to date and marry whomever she likes. The stories of Kate Chopin were about women who craved different types of freedom, and the idea of this was so scandalous that many of her stories were not published until well after her death. Women in the nineteenth century were expected to conform to the roles that society created for them. They could not enjoy the same freedoms that women today take for granted. Chopin then, through her female characters, explores how women were repressed, usually by their marital roles and shows how they could transform by simply experiencing some sort of freedom. In The Storm and The Story of an Hour, she uses powerful imagery to suggest just how repressed women were in their roles in the late 1800s. As a reader in the twenty-first century, one might wonder what made Chopins works so controversial. It is important to note the