International Journal of Integrative Humanism Vol. 12, No. 1, March. 2020

Aesthetic Significance and Biographical Signposting: ’s “” and the Release of Patriarchal Grief David Toh Kusi (PhD)1 Amandine Ankainkom Zetang-Jua2 Higher Teacher Training College (ENS) Prince George’s Community College Maryland, Yaoundé USA University of Yaoundé I Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Tel: +237677847181 Tel: 0012403603879

Abstract Kate Chopin in “The Story of an Hour” achieves an artistic experience sustained by characters imbued with personal, symbolic, mythical and philosophic realities that are telling of the author’s perception of life and quest for aesthetic self-assertion. As a female writer in the late 19th century American society fraud with patriarchal prejudices on the woman folk, Chopin needed a voice and a style that is unique. By sublimating her experiences in art, she attained her objectives where she establishes ambivalence in her character paintings and subject matter. Even though traces of real- life experiences are discernible in this story, she paints philosophic and controversial characters who are symbolic incarnation of multiple personalities and important figures whose lives like her father, mother and her husband, haunted her for the most part of her life. A psycho-biographical reading of the text, therefore, permits us to perceive “The Story of an Hour” as a signpost to the author’s struggles and psychological expression of her artistic cravings. Key words: Pyscho-biography, signposting, artistic quest, “The Story of an Hour”, patriarchy, woman, freedom. Introduction Kate Chopin’s veiled personalities in her works attracted multiple interpretations by critics who read her works at the backdrop of beliefs in the 19th century that the male writers excelled in writing more than the woman because they eschewed domesticity. Gabrielle Baldwin says Chopin wrote stories of love, marriage and domestic life (often with a Creole flavour), presumably for two reasons; that was what her audience wanted and that was what she knew about. He quotes The Awakening where Chopin succeeds in establishing the patterns of seduction - the temptations, the longings, frustrations and punishments - which the critic, Leslie Fiedler sees as the central concerns of the sentimental novel (qtd. in Baldwin 53). In order to highlight the important place female writers like Kate Chopin occupied in American Literature, Baldwin traces subversive tendencies that have characterised female writers in the American literary landscape from the 19th century. The heroin, Edna Pontellier, in The Awakening, is a controversial figure as depicted by Baldwin and also symbolises such growing detachment from a regulated patriarchal society. Even though from a formalist, deconstructionist or structuralist perspective Baldwin captures the ambivalence in the way Chopin presents her character, Edna, he fails to perceive that in this ambivalent painting, Chopin unravels multiple incarnation of personalities in a single character which she, in “The Story of an Hour”, succeeds to forestall. Chopin’s enigma in character description requires heterogeneous critical insights to determine not only the author’s inner wrangling but the “selfs” she creates in her characters who capture the woes of the persistently searching mind of the late 19th century American woman fraud with frustration, betrayal, and struggle; unrequited love, displacement, emotional distress, illusion, and thwarted romance which reveal the layers of isolation suffered by female protagonists in Chopin’s fiction as depicted by A. J. Scopino, Jr. (237). This is because as Cynthia Griffin Wolff

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states, a majority of Chopin’s fictions are set in worlds where stability or permanence is a precarious state; where change is always threatened by the vagaries of impassive fate and by the assaults of potentially ungovernable individual passions, or merely by the inexorable passage of time (Wolff). As a result, Wolf says Chopin construes existence as necessarily uncertain. According to her, to live is to be vulnerable; and the artist who would capture the essence of life will turn his attention to those intimate and timeless moments when the comforting illusion of certainty is unbalanced by those forces that may disrupt and destroy (Wolf). The vagaries of impassive fate and the ungovernable passions mentioned here by Wolf have inadvertently shaped the fate of the woman in the American society. Chopin, like an artist who grows in a very hostile community with numerous prejudices against the woman, sees beyond the boundaries of these limitations and bestows a sense of an ominous presence of the self that is not only symbolic but mythical, and philosophic. In relation to Chopin’s philosophical ideas, Xuemei Wan in Kate “Chopin’s View on Death and Freedom in ‘The Story of an Hour’” concludes with the opinion that Chopin’s philosophical ideas of life and death are clearly reflected in “The Story of Hour”, which have transcended the irreconcilable conflict between life and death. According to him, they echo the philosophical thought of Zhuangzi, ancient Chinese thinker, and Martin Heideggar (170). This confirms his earlier discourse in the same article that in Mrs. Mallard’s psychological state, we could find that her emotional change must be described as the development of an increasingly resistant barrier between the real external world and that world which is most authentic in her experience; the inner world of her fantasies. Though in her deep heart there is an ardent longing for freedom and for female self- assertion, and beneath her reserve lies a strain of romanticism and rebelliousness, Wan says, “she has no chance to release from what she evidently felt as repression or frustration, thereby freeing forces that had lain dormant in her” (168). These forces that had lain dominant in her are what in this article are termed as patriarchal grief which she forcefully sublimates in “The Story of an Hour”. The unresolved mystery in her just as in the inner beings of the traditional American woman are the strongest impulses, passions and conflicts she incarnates in her characters. These shifting tendencies which enhance Chopin’s aesthetic significance and biographical signposting remind us in “The Story of an Hour”, as Wan puts it that all through her life, she must have been constantly shifting to adjust to the loss of her family members such as her father (in 1855), great-grandmother, brother, grandmother, her husband (in 1883), and her mother, and to her changing place in her personal community (Wan 168). Some major critics, who have handled important ideas ranging from societal and patriarchal bondages, racial malaise in the American South, the nostalgia and the numerous paradoxes against which the woman had to survive in the American society in the 19th century which Chopin has enigmatically demonstrated in her works are Karen Simons, Stalina Veeramankai Yoharatnam, Teresa Gibert, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, David Z. Wehner, and Iulia Andreea Milică. Loyal to their critical and historical backgrounds, these critics have no doubt captured the resilience, subversive undertones, and the ambiguities that have made Chopin’s narratives artistically grounded in American literary heritage. The critics succeed to project Chopin as the female write who penetrates and dissolves the hidden worlds of the woman and empowers her with ideologies, concrete beliefs, and philosophical self-assertiveness. However, none of them examines Chopin’s works from a psycho-biographical perspective as applied in the “The Story of an Hour” in this article. Therefore, a brief discussion of key terms or theoretical concepts like Psycho-biography, and a brief presentation of the author’s life lay the groundwork for a proper understanding of the discussions and critical perspectives adopted in this article.

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Brief discussion of key terms or theoretical concepts Psycho-biography originates from Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic criticism where he developed various models of the human psyche consisting of the conscious and the unconscious (Bressler 125). Freud believed that the unconscious is a dynamic system that not only contains our biographical memories but also stores our suppressed and unresolved conflicts (ibid). When related to artistic creation, Freud had maintained that an author’s chief motivation for writing is to gratify some secrete desire, some forbidden wish that probably developed during the author’s infancy and was immediately suppressed and dumped in the unconscious (Bressler 137). To him, the outward manifestation of this suppressed wish becomes the literary work itself, and that the literary work is indeed the author’s dream or fantasy (ibid). However, Freud believed that the unconscious houses humanity’s two basic instincts characterised as eros, or sexual instinct, later referred to as the libido, and the destructive or the aggressive instinct (Bressler 127). As a result, other psychoanalyst like Carl Gustav Jung, and post- Freudian psychoanalyst like Jacque Lacan, Leon Edel and M. H. Abrams have not only questioned Freud’s models but have added more critical impetus to the understanding of human character, since Freud based all human motivations, whether conscious or unconscious, on sexual drives. Leon Edel, one of the critics, argued from the perspective of psycho-biography which, nonetheless, takes into consideration Freud’s idea that the work of art as an author’s expression of personal experiences once suppressed and have resurfaced as a product of imagination, functions as a liberation of psychic energy and a yearning for artistic creation as will be exemplified in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”. Therefore, Psychobiography is used in this work as a therapy to determine the faculties involved in creating aesthetic realms and biographic sublimations which are appealing to Chopin’s craving soul in “The Story of an Hour”. Even though the integrity of the literary work as a creative outcome of personality must be recognised as distinct from the biography of the personality, both may be studied in pursuit of the “creative process” as Edel puts it (131). Responding to writers’ lives especially that which is fraught with ambivalent human relationships, psycho-biographical critics like M. H. Abrams also think that literary psychology is concerned with man’s myth-making and symbol-creating imagination and his/her unremitting effort to find the language and form to express these myths (65). “The Story of an Hour” is, thus, interpreted here as a signpost to understanding the deeper inner wrangling that characterised Chopin from childhood and how her surrounding, interpersonal relations, her cultural realities and artistic pursuits fashioned her existence and her entire career as a writer. Some synopsis of Kate Chopin’s life taken from Literature Online biography could later be linked to her work like her birth in St Louis, Missouri, on 8 February 1850 where she was named Catherine O”Flaherty. She was an American writer who came to prominence at the fin de siècle with her short stories, many about Louisiana life. She was admired in her lifetime chiefly for her ‘charming’ depictions of ‘local colour’ and her novel, The Awakening (1899), is often regarded as her great achievement at this time. Her parents were Irish-born merchant, Thomas O”Flaherty and Eliza Faris, daughter of a prominent St Louis French family. Her father, Thomas, was a widower with a son, George, who died whilst serving as a Confederate soldier during the Civil War. Kate was the second child of her father’s second marriage to her mother Eliza. Her childhood was greatly influenced by her French great-grandmother who taught her the art of storytelling, oversaw her education for over a year, after her father’s death in a railway accident in 1855. At the age of thirteen, Kate O’Flaherty became a minor local celebrity after tearing

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down a Union flag attached to her house by Yankee soldiers. She married Oscar Chopin in 1870 and the couple settled in New Orleans; their first son was born the following spring, and by 1879, they had had four more sons and a daughter. Oscar afforded his wife a considerable degree of liberty. When his finances became parlous, they later settled in rural Louisiana where Oscar ran a store and died of swamp fever in 1882. After her husband’s death, Kate remained in Coulterville for two years running the business and punctiliously paying off her husband’s large debts. She took writing as a profession and during the early 1890s, she published dozens of stories in periodicals and worked on novels some of which were never published. In the mid-twentieth century a rumour developed that The Awakening had been banned from St Louis libraries soon after publication and that Chopin had become something of a pariah, but she remained a literary luminary until her death on 22 August 1904. Critical perspectives and aesthetic valorisation “The Story of an Hour” is a captivating story about Mrs. Mallard fretting with her unmitigated heart trouble which other characters in the text like her sister, Josephine and her husband’s friend, Richards, fear a sudden psychological and physical breakdown should they not use tact to inform her of her husband’s death, Brently Mallard. The fear that characterises the breaking of the news of Brently Mallard’s death to Mrs Mallard already foregrounds a certain conception about a woman in the text as weak, sensitive and emotionally irrational when she is heart stricken. Chopin says, Richards “had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message” (128). While the story progresses with how Mrs Mallard is being managed and how she overcomes the wrong news of the sudden death of her husband, Chopin makes no further statement about Brently Mallard and the circumstances surrounding his death. The physical and psychological state of the Mrs Mallard is the centre of attraction. It is an ambivalent state that helps to uncover some hidden truths about Mrs Mallard which can be linked to the author’s life and traumatic experiences. It is important to perceive the character of Mrs Mallard as a symbolic representation of different personalities incarnating the fears and pains that had characterised Chopin in childhood after the death of her father, Thomas O'Flaherty, her husband, Oscar Chopin; and her mother, Eliza Faris, or her late father’s wife. When intelligence of the railroad disaster is received that Brently Mallard’s name is leading the list of “killed” (Chopin 352), there is no doubt about the disaster especially when Richards needed to assure himself of the news just with a second telegram. In this scene, the author makes us picture truth in the breaking news and at the same time, we are presented the mindset of the people in Mallard’s home. An uneasy atmosphere characterises the setting of the story since the sad news correspond to the protagonist, Mrs Mallard’s state of mind who is a patient. The death of Brently Mallard in a “railroad disaster” (352) in “The Story of an Hour” corresponds with the death of Chopin’s father, Thomas O’Flaherty, in a railway accident in 1855 as earlier indicated in Chopin’s childhood experience. It can be deduced that Chopin’s father died when she was just five. There might have been an oedipal complex relationship that existed between daughter and father so strong that it affected Chopin psychologically, reasons she decides to incarnate the father figure in Mallard, who at the end of the story reappears. How Eliza Faris, Chopin’s mother received the news of her husband’s death can be directly related to the same feelings and psychological trauma Mrs Mallard goes through in this story. The vividness with which Chopin narrates Mrs Mallard’s Psychological instability clearly indicates that Chopin as a child recorded every event that took place and she was certainly devastated by her mother’s comportment as she says: “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself, she went away to her room alone. She would

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have no one follow her” (Chopin 352). Chopin certainly witnessed this psychological torture the mother went through on her father’s death. With this trauma haunting her, she grew to see women going through similar situations in their homes in the 19th century American society who never expressed their feelings. Writing “The story of an Hour” is like an artistic achievement within which she ironically recreates her past in a way that it captures all the fears and worries she could not express when she was young and living in a stifling environment. Her radical insights into the reality of marriage and her recognition that love may be grown into and out of was shocking to the public especially catholic Christians at the time considering that she schooled at Sacred Heart convent in St Louis Missouri. That is why The Awakening was banned from St Louis libraries soon after publication, before her death in 1904. As the omniscient narrator, she creates no instance where a child is seen in the story which could be interpreted as the couple was barren. But this is intentional because of her craving for aesthetic significance in the manner she artistically tells her story. It can be assumed that no character as a child in the story can give a faithful story as what she witnessed and recorded of the demised of her father and the consequences on her life. As the omniscient narrator, she succeeds to sublimate now, as an adult, the painful experience of despair which she suppressed as a child because by then she was unable to tell her story. Therefore, while Mrs Mallard could be seen as Eliza, her mother, she at the same time incarnates Chopin who can now expressed herself the way she wants because she has achieved some artistic power and freedom to express her feelings, which most women lacked at her time. This artistic excellence reveals an author who was not only concerned with her personal life but with the life of others especially the women folk in the patriarchal late 19th century American society. The news of the death of Brently Mallard is symbolic of the collapse of patriarchy and the liberation of the woman. But the psychological torture, indecisions and contemplations of possible freedom by Mrs Mallard in her room portrays the fears of the American woman if she can actually be set free at last. The room that she runs into and alone symbolises her inner being or the self the searches for meaning imprison in a body that cannot act for its proper liberation. The room is like her comfort zone, and everything that goes through her mind in the room remains within her. The self in her, though in total dejection and restlessness is inhabited in a body which can be referred to the comfortable roomy armchair in which she sits “pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul” (Chopin 352). The narrator says, She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought. (Chopin 353) Even though Chopin is known for her feminist undertones in favour of the liberation or the emancipation of the American woman in the early 20th century American society, in “The Story of an Hour”, she distinguishes herself in her narrative by painting fears and wishes which women in general always suppress especially if they are married to despotic husbands. As Mrs Mallard, Elisa, Chopin’s mother, who represents the feelings of the American woman, may have had this same feeling after the husband’s death: And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often, she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self- assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being! ‘Free! Body and soul free!’ she kept whispering. (Chopin 353-4)

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We see in the image of Mrs Mallard a caged figure who wants liberation which she recognises in this excerpt as a possession of self-assertion that counts more than love. It is the strongest impulse in her and manifests just as it often manifests in widows who are liberated by the news of their husbands’ deaths but would never express such feelings to the open because society would consider that as a sign of disrespect and dishonour to that man especially in the patriarchal American society. It is said about Chopin’s artistic career that she advocated the emancipation of the woman in stories like “Emancipation: A Life Fable” which significantly addresses one of her key themes, the desire for freedom -- in this case that of a caged creature -- no matter if the consequences are difficult or even fatal (“Biography Online”). In “The Story of an Hour”, therefore, she breaks taboo subjects by letting the reader to read what goes through Mrs Mallard’s mind as a response to every woman who is subjected to a man’s control, oppression, physical and psychological torture. The father figure is an important subject to Chopin, and her narrative, “The Story of an Hour”, measures the degree of love she had for her father. The story begins with the announcement of the death of Mallard but at the end of the story he is alive: Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife. (Chopin 354) The death of Thomas O’Flaherty, when Chopin was just five had never seemed real to her until she grew to accept that she did not have a father. She does not therefore kill Brently Mallard in the story because that to her could mean parricide since her biography reveals that that the passing away of her father affected her so much. She has therefore always yearned for the father figure which she incarnates in Brently Mallard. The oedipal complex of father daughter relationship manifests here in the sense that her resuscitation of the father figure in Mallard at the end of the story confirms that fact that Chopin still lives with the hope of ever meeting his real father alive. She, like other children at five would never have considered the death of a loved one like a father as real but as a voyage and would remain in the illusion that he will return. Chopin in her ambivalent style succeeds to create controversy here but artistically realises wishful thinking which she achieves in art. The antagonistic relationship that often exist between mother and daughter is paradoxically the result of the doctor’s declaration at the end of the story that “When the doctors came, they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills” (Chopin 130). The narrator shows no remorse in the declaration of the death of the unnamed woman at the end of the story. The unnamed woman could be Mrs Mallard, or the Brently Mallards first wife. It can be deduced from the doctor’s declaration that in the 19th century American society, women’s lives and wellbeing were of no significance. There was no proper attention that was given to their health conditions and a woman could die even of minor illnesses or disease that could easily be identified and cured. For instance, in Chopin’s biography, we are just told that her father was a widower but we are not told what his first wife died of. In “The Story of an Hour”, it is said that Mrs Mallard is “afflicted with a heart trouble” (352) meaning that she constantly had emotional problems which degenerated into heart problems. At the end of the story the doctors declare the death of a woman whom they say “had died of heart diseases” (354). The idea of “heart disease--of the joy that kills” is a paradoxical statement and metaphor for love which most American woman suffered and died of in their marriages. The attitude of Mrs Mallard upon hearing her husband’s death sustains the fear and insecurity that characterised

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American families where women suppressed their feelings and could not ask for divorce even when things were not moving for fear that the patriarchal society would see them as moral misfits. Chopin, therefore, implicitly advocates a woman’s freedom on the basis that love is not imprisonment and that a woman should be allowed to pursue her freedom even out of marriage. Josephine and Richards in the story are therefore a perfect representation of the American society and public opinion. She worries about Mrs Mallard because she feels that if she is left alone, she would breakdown psychologically. Mrs Mallard “did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms” (352). But when she begins to assert herself while she contemplates how she would soon be free, Josephine’s worry about her condition irritates her because she, Mrs Mallard, has the opportunity to be liberated from the caged love affair she has had with Brently Mallard which she reflects as, Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. (Chopin 353) Even before the announcement of Brently Mallard’s death, “only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long”. This means she had already concluded that as long as she is married to Mr Mallard, she will not be a happy woman. Therefore, “…life might be long”. She now foresees a different life after Brently Mallard’s death that would also be long but she now has to be self- supportive. She had wished Brently Mallard death so she could be freed from her moribund marriage life. When Josephine implores her to leave the room, She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister’s waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom. (Chopin 353) As earlier mentioned in the essay, all what goes through Mrs Mallard’s mind depicts the suffering and pain of the 19th and early 20th century American Woman. The narrator even characterises her mental victory over the trauma of the husband’s death as a triumph like the “goddess of Victory” (ibid). She seems to possess the Victory of her triumph like a goddess but it is described as “unwittingly” (354) because it is not real and short lived. It is only in the mind and like the American woman in the creole society in which Chopin lived, she cannot undertake any concrete action for her personal liberation. In the context of Chopin’s psychic underpinnings, as can be verified in “The story of an Hour”, her husband’s death, Oscar Chopin, had strong influence on her and might have contributed greatly in making her the artist that she is in this story. In the same way as Chopin’s biographers mention nothing or very little about her mother, Eliza Faris’ marital woes or joys, her own life with Oscar Chopin is not given great attention. We are told that Kate Chopin rejoiced after her marriage in her new freedom to walk the streets alone and to smoke cigarettes, and it seems that Oscar afforded his wife a considerable degree of liberty. We don’t know what transpired between the couple for her to be spectacularly afforded liberty in a patriarchal American society. We are also told in “Biography Online” that at the age of thirteen, Kate O’Flaherty, Chopin, became a minor local celebrity after tearing down a Union flag attached to her house by Yankee soldiers. This implies that from childhood, Chopin was already a radical and might have fought very hard to

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obtain her freedom from her husband who submitted and granted her liberty. Despite such freedom, she could not still excel in writing until after his death in 1882. In the same manner, “The story of an Hour” says nothing about the relationship between Mrs Mallard and Brently Mallard apart from the fact that they are husband and wife. It is only from Mrs Mallard’s state of mind and her confrontation with her desire to be set “free, free, free!” that we know she had marital problems as she “…saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome” (Chopin 353). Therefore, the feelings which Chopin could not express when the husband was still alive can now find manifest in the character of Mrs Mallard who is an incarnation of Chopin’s hidden frustrations, the expression of her creative imagination and artistic attainment. The reappearance of Brently at the end of the story this time symbolises the ghost of every 19th century American woman characterised in fear and doubt of themselves and their abilities in the presence of men. Chopin also seems to suggest that there will always be societies with men and women. Therefore, women have to learn to take their destinies into their hands and fight for their freedom instead of waiting for husbands to die first for they to be liberated. That to Chopin cannot be a solution to women’s problems because in a patriarchal society even the mentality of the woman like Josephine’s submissiveness is enough to remind every woman of her position as subordinate to the man. Conclusion In conclusion, Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” is a carefully wrought story that reveals the author’s artistic prioress in the way the story relates to her life, some stages of her growth and interpersonal relationships which were very significant in building her philosophic and psychological maturity. While the background stories of the Creole upper class society, as well as the lower-class social circles in Coulterville inspired her in the way her imagination captured ethno- cultural realities reflected in true stories about her people, she found fulfilment in artistic sublimations which made her renown. Her creation of ambivalent characters like Mrs Mallard expresses the fears, worries, pains and psychological trauma Chopin and the late 19th century American woman experienced. Marriage, according to Chopin in the story, was a form of imprisonment for the woman whose joy or freedom could only be obtained after the husband’s death. Therefore, Chopin’s biography is, as illustrated in this article, indispensable in understanding “The Story of an Hour”. The story is not only an interesting but very controversial, ambivalent, psychologically engaging, philosophic and artistically complex in terms of character portrayal in the unfolding of paradoxical events through which the emancipation of the woman is expressed. Works Cited Baldwin, Gabrielle. “The Place of Female Writers in American Literature: The Case of Kate Chopin”. Australasian Journal of American Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1 (July, 1986), pp. 50-56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41053404 Bressler, Charles. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. 5Ed. United States: Pearson Education, 2011. Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour”. The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. Per Seyersted, Ed. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969: 353-354. Edel, Leon. “Psychology and Literature”. Encyclopaedia of World Literature in the 20th Century. Vol. 3. Eds. Wolfgang Bernard F. et al. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1971. 126 - 31. “From Literature Online biography” Chopin, Kate, 1851-1904 http://armytage.net/updata/Kate%20Chopin%20Biography.pdf

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Gibert, Teresa. "Textual, contextual and critical surprises in 'Desiree's Baby'." Connotations, vol. 14, no. 1-3, 2004, p. 38+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A317309770/AONE?u=ussd&sid=AONE&xid=09566526. Accessed 3 Feb. 2020. Milică, Iulia Andreea. “The Mammies and Uncles of the South: The Subversive Tales of Joel Chandler Harris and Kate Chopin”. American, British and Canadian Studies, 2018 p.27-49 Simons, Karen. "Kate Chopin on the nature of things." The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 2, 1998, p. 243+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A21066626/AONE?u=ussd&sid=AONE&xid=50f09b37. Accessed 3 Feb. 2020. Scopino Jr, A. J. “Beyond and alone!; the theme of isolation in selected short fiction of Kate Chopin, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eudora Welty.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Spring, 2008), pp. 236-238 http://www.jstor.org/stable/25478557. Accessed 7 Feb. 2020. Wan, Xuemei. “Kate Chopin’s View on Death and Freedom in ‘The Story of an Hour’”. English Language Teaching, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Dec. 2009), p. 167-170. www.ccsenet.org/journal.html Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew. "In possession of the letter: Kate Chopin's 'Her Letters'." Studies in American Fiction, vol. 30, no. 1, 2002, p. 45+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A96195553/AONE?u=ussd&sid=AONE&xid=23f302d6. Accessed 3 Feb. 2020. Wehner, David Z. "'A lot up for grabs': the idiosyncratic, syncretic religious temperament of Kate Chopin." American Literary Realism, vol. 43, no. 2, 2011, p. 154+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A253843680/AONE?u=ussd&sid=AONE&xid=3b8e4 984. Accessed 3 Feb. 2020. Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. "Kate Chopin and the fiction of limits: 'Desiree's Baby'." The Southern Literary Journal, vol. 10, no. 2, 1978, p. 123+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A131896931/AONE?u=ussd&sid=AONE&xid=c1b3f7ff. Accessed 3 Feb. 2020. Yoharatnam, Veeramankai Stalina. "A Woman's Achievement of Liberating Triumph from Worldly Bondages: A Critical Analysis of Kate Chopin's The Awakening." Language In India, Oct. 2018, p. 308+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A568044567/AONE?u=ussd&sid=AONE&xid=04349658. Accessed 3 Feb. 2020.

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