Societal Boundaries in Kate Chopins The Story of an Hour...

Societal Boundaries in Kate Chopins The Story of an Hour and Desirees Baby As humans, we live our life within the boundaries of our belief systems and moral guidelines we were raised with. Kate Chopin’s â€Å"The Story of an Hour† and â€Å"Desiree’s Baby† tells the story of two women who live according to those societal boundaries. American author Kate Chopin (1850–1904) wrote about a hundred short stories and two novels in the 1890s. Most of her fiction is set in Louisiana and most of her best-known work focuses on the lives of sensitive, intelligent women. After her fathers death, Kates family included her widowed mother, her widowed grandmother and her widowed great-grandmother.†¦show more content†¦Themes as self-reliant women as protagonists, post Civil War racism, male/female relationships and what would eventually become known as male chauvinism are common. These were difficult times for many women because of the domination of men over them. A woman was expected to act and behave in ways tha t were submissive to men in every aspect of their life. Indeed, a woman’s life revolved around her husband and his needs and desires. Women had very little say in their own ambitions or desires. Behaving in non-conventional ways would mean being shunned from society. However, one woman’s world revolves around and for her husband while another dreams of a life free of marital boundaries. Nevertheless, Kate Chopin uses two types of irony in â€Å"The Story of an Hour† to reflect her views. Situational irony refers to the opposite of what is supposed to happen, and dramatic irony occurs when the reader knows something that the rest of the characters in the story do not know. The irony in this short story makes the reader understand that the unexpected happens in life. The first irony detected is in the way that Louise reacts to the news of the death of her husband, Brently Mallard. â€Å"She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance†. Instead, she acceptsShow MoreRelatedAn Analysis Of Kate Chopin s Chopin 1690 Words   |  7 PagesKate Chopin was a famous American author of many short stories and novels. Chopin is now considered to have been a predecessor of the feminist movement and a leader of the feminist authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kate Chopin lived a rather traditional life as a housewife until her husband’s untimely death, which significantly changed the course of her life. Chopin s career as a writer actually began when she started facing financial struggles due to the death of her husband. Chopin’s