During the late nineteenth century, the role of women in society was much different than it is today.  With the approach of the end of the nineteenth century, women were tired of it and with that came first-wave feminism in hopes of more equal, better lives.  In Kate Chopin's short story, The Story of an Hour, the way women lived through men prominently displays women's rights in the late nineteenth century and my research of first-wave feminism, women's gender studies, and marriage, gave me a better understanding of why women took a stand against men.

After first reading the story, I understood everything that occurred but did not quite see all of the underlying meaning of what was happening.  The key elements of the story are that Mrs. Mallard didn't particularly hate her husband, but it's clear that she wasn't truly in love with him; these aspects are obvious because it is all clearly placed right in front of the reader, those are the simple things in the story that provide a base allowing Chopin to demonstrate the way of life of a nineteenth century woman which is the hidden message.  All of that made for a pretty straight forward story but the ending left me confused.  Did Mrs. Mallard die in the end because she was excited to see her husband alive, or did she die because she had gotten over the fact that he was dead and was excited to live life on her own without him?  Technically, this could be up to the reader's interpretation.  With minimal background knowledge of the events going on at the time, I first got the idea that she was shocked from the excitement of seeing him alive and well.  However, after reading about the ongoing events, it led me to think that she was more sad than excited to see Mr. Mallard alive because she wouldn't be able to live for herself.  Learning more about the historical-cultural events going on at the time helped shape my new view of what happened.

Once I chose a secondary source and read more about gender roles back then, I had a much better understanding of why Mrs. Mallard felt the way she did after receiving news of her husband dying.  In the late 1800s, women were looked at as weak, domestic, illogical, unable to resist temptation, and not sexual/sensual.  One of the topics covered in my secondary source explains how some women wrote "New Woman Fiction" stories and it covers the topics they discussed in various different stories.  In Robert Yelverton Tyrrell's review of Jude in the Fortnightly Review he wrote, " we cannot but class it with the fiction of Sex and the New Woman, so rife of late." (Cunningham 178).  This relates to Kate Chopin's story because it was the same kind of story as Jude, Tyrrell placed all of these stories into this "genre" he is describing.  Reading this gave me an idea of why these stories were called "New Woman Fiction"; I think they were referred to as that because this was not a usual topic to read about so the people lumped them into their own category because they were all fictitious works of this so called "new woman" that the reviewers saw as no more than that, strictly a work of fiction.  From my secondary source, I learned that marriage in general was much different than it is today and these women who wrote the novels were kind of the first to really challenge the unequal roles of man and woman in marriage (Cunningham 179).  They thought the socially-sanctioned structure of marriage discriminated against women and they showed their beliefs through the characters in these stories (Cunningham 178).  This cleared up the story so much; when Mrs. Mallard goes into her room to ponder about what has happened, she is pretty sad at first but then she actually gets quite happy and has a better outlook on how life will be without Mr. Mallard.  I think this is the case because being married was probably more of a pain since the woman was basically treated as children, being told how to act and what to do by their husband.  Mrs. Mallard and other women were around during the time of Victorian assertions of the weakness and reliance of the female (Cunningham 179).  Also, learning the fact that the full complexity of female nature had never truly been confronted before this absolutely helped me realize why Chopin displayed her thoughts on those things so subtly and didn't jump out vividly expressing her view on the topic (Cunningham 180).  These ideas brought up were exactly the opposite of what most readers back then wanted to hear, they were just things that were never brought up because that is how it always was and thought to be how it would always be.  In the end, my secondary source provided me with new information which completely changed my perspective of why she died than I had thought in the beginning.

The women writing these "New Woman Fiction" stories had a goal from the beginning, to attack marriage and to break the censorship of sexuality in works of fiction.  Above all, they used these stories to argue the feminist case.  Writing these stories allowed them to propose their argument in many different points of view since they literally could use as many characters they'd like and they got to write the story how they wanted it.  Chopin conveys her idea's very well when the reader has an idea of the issues surrounding women's rights at the time; if the reader goes into it with absolutely no idea what's going on at the time, I feel like they might not understand the underlying meaning of the story, kind of like myself when I first read it.  The topics present in my secondary source add so much information that I feel is vital in understanding the story and after reading both the story and secondary source a few times, it changed how I interpreted the story.  With the secondary source I gained so much information, everything from why these types of stories were written to who the audience was and much more.  The story was directed towards an audience of conservative readers and reviewers who were getting irritated by the all of the similar "New Woman Fiction" stories (Cunningham 177-178).  The story was definitely effective, along with the other ones just like it; the problems discussed in the story still may not be completely over with, but they are much better today than in the time this was happening.

All in all, The Story of an Hour does a very good job conveying what life was like for women in the late nineteenth century and why women took a stand against men.  Chopin's story is an excellent short piece that packs in a lot of hidden meaning and my secondary source was the key that allowed me to decipher the true meaning behind everything.

