Chopin Thesis Activity

Thesis #2: By contrasting images of life with those of death throughout “The Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin highlights the struggle of a person imprisoned by societal pressures and thereby kept from fully being alive.

Example for Thesis #1:

“She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air.” (Paragraph 5) Chopin uses this example to express how Mrs. Mallard feels when first hearing the news of her husband’s death. Instead of feeling dark and death like, she feels life in the air. This feeling of freedom from being a single widowed woman shows that the expectations of married women in the 1900s are an oppression of Mrs. Mallard’s desired freedo