Analysis of Kate Chopin's Story of an Hour

Commentary

I chose to use Kate Chopin’s ‘Story of an Hour’, as I feel the way that she portrayed her main character Louise Mallard was very interesting and there were many areas that I could explore in the presentation. The story line of the short story is easy to settle into, and also the plot twist at the end is very surprising. Overall, I felt that ‘Story of an Hour’ was a very good short story to analyse, as I could analyse different aspects.

The other short story I chose to include was ‘The Necklace’ by Guy de Maupassant, where a young woman, Mme Loisel, tries to look rich, but then loses her friends necklace. After this she had to repair a huge debt, and again, there was a very surprising ending, as the necklace only cost 500 francs, not over 30,000 which is what the Loisel’s paid. I feel like Mme Loisel is very well portrayed by Maupassant, and acts “heroically”, and is easy to relate to.

I feel that these two short stories can be compared very easily, as both protagonists are female, both are unhappy and desire more, and finally, at the end, booth women end up in a situation worse than when they started. Overall, there are many ways to explore the presentation of the two characters, and due to the choices available, I felt that these two stories go well together.

However, I rejected 1 passage, ‘Significant Cigarettes’ by Rose Tremain, and two poems, namely ‘An Unknown Girl’ by Moniza Alvi, and Wilfred Owen’s war poem ‘Disabled’.

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In my opinion, ‘Significant Cigarettes’ would not have been very easy to compare to one of the other poems/passages available, as there are so few similarities with the ones I studied. Although the story was quite interesting, I did not feel like a comparison would have worked very well, so I rejected this passage quite quickly. On the other hand, the two poems would have been an engaging comparison, and, if I’m honest, it was very hard to choose which comparison to write. However, what made up my mind was that the two short stories were set in the same time-period, so the reaction to both stories would be quite similar and views towards women were the same, which helps in the comparison, and means that the authors may have had similar reasons for publishing their story. Also, the two poems have different purposes and messages, with the young boy in ‘Disabled’ being Owens way of expressing his contempt at war, and ‘An Unknow Girl’ showing someone getting henna tattoos in a bazaar, I eventually dismissed this pairing, and decided to go to the effective combination of ‘The Necklace’ and ‘Story of an Hour’.