Kate Chopin's Views on Marraige

Kate Chopin is brilliant in her writing. Her views are like a single thread woven into a large tapestry. The message is there, but you need to look deeper into the story to find it.

In her story The Storm, and The Story of an Hour, there are implied attitudes on her views towards marriage.

In her story The Story of an Hour, Mrs. Mallard finds joy in freedom in the news of her husband's death. When she realizes he is alive she dies a sudden death. The publisher probably saw the story as a lesson to be learned for Mrs. Mallard's selfish attitude. When we look deeper into the story, we see that Mrs. Mallard's death was a freedom. She felt that marriage was a crime, whether it be a kind or cruel intention, of one human being imposing their will upon another. She already felt dead. The day before she learns of her husband's supposed death she had shuddered to think that her life may be long. Kate Chopin states that Mrs. Mallard loved her husband: sometimes.

In Kate Chopin's story The Storm, Calixta cheats on her husband while he and their son wait out a storm in town. The man she cheats with was a boyfriend she had before her marriage to Bobinot. When her husband and son return from town Calixta greets them with good humor and acts as if nothing out of the ordinary happened while they were gone.

Calixta's lover writes to his wife who is away visiting friends that she need not hurry back, that he was fine, and could bear the separation a while longer. He solitiously tells her that the health of Clarisse and the babies comes first. Clarisse is charmed by his letter; however, she relishes her "first free breath" since marriage. Kate Chopin states that although Clarisse was devoted to her husband, she was more than willing to forego their intimacy for a while.

The implied attitudes towards marriage are similar in both stories. The word free is used by Mrs. Mallard. She says, "free, free, free, body and soul free", when she finds out her husband dies. Clarisse uses the word free referring to a break from her marriage. Calixta's hour of infidelity gives her a sense of freedom from the confinement of her marriage which is implied in her attitude upon her husband's return.

Kate's views on marriage are implied in her stories because her her views were not widely accepted in the 1890's. If she had verbalized her views outright, none of her stories would have been published in her time.