Kate Chopin — from The Awakening and "The Story of an Hour"

Kate Chopin was a radical author for her time, because she wrote of how women wished to be free (Chopin). She wrote of how women could do nothing except care for their husbands and children, and how often they wanted to just be free to live their own lives (Chopin). They did not want to have all of their decisions made for them, and they wanted to let their true emotions show (Chopin). Kate understood how those women felt, for she was a wife and a mother as well, although her time as a wife was cut short when her husband passed (Chopin). Her works were very controversial at the time, and often they went unpublished, because she could get no one to look at anything that radical and filthy (Chopin). After she had passed, when women were fighting for their rights to vote, someone found all of Chopin's works and published them, helping the women's cause (Chopin). This work definitely fits with the time period of Realism, because it is about the moment and what the women were feeling (Chopin). Her works showed a lot about women's true feelings, and that shows that her works were incredibly realistic (Chopin). These works were not Naturalistic, because they were not a calculated study of women and their feelings, it was just about letting the emotions run freely (Chopin). These works did not have any Regionalistic characteristics, because there was nothing about a certain place or how one region was any better than any other region (Chopin). These works show quite a lot about society at the time. They show that women of the time were often very unhappy with their lives, but that they could do nothing about it (Chopin). Even when Chopin wrote these works, no one took her seriously, and that shows that the men either did not care what the women were thinking, or they did not think that Chopin was right, so it was only her works that they did not care at all about (Chopin). There was nothing about religion, for a woman's feelings about her personal life do not necessarily always involve God (Chopin). There is nothing about government, because this problem did not stem from the government, it stemmed from stereotypes of the time (Chopin). There was nothing about nature, but human nature played a large role in these works (Chopin). These works showed that human nature is to let one's feelings out, but women of the time could only do that in private (Chopin). They show that when one is in a tough position, one will often bend to make everything work out well until they are bent so far they will break (Chopin). This shows the American Dream of women, to get their freedom from a life of boredom and pain (Chopin). There is no figurative language, and there is also nothing about a Hero (Chopin). Kate Chopin wrote radically for her time, but she was eventually recognized for her great talents. Many people look up to her, and she was an amazing and strong woman that deserves all of the credit that she gets. People really appreciate her straightforward style, and enjoy the fact that she was willing to speak her mind.

Chopin, Kate. ""The Awakening"/"The Story of an Hour"" American Literature. Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Douglas Fisher, Beverly A. Chin, and Jacqueline J. Royster. Columbus: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2009. 491+. Print.