Female Characters In The Story Of An Hour and In The Necklace

In “the Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, both writers show the female characters not being able to accept their situations and suffering horrible faiths due to that. They both do it in a similar way with some differences. Kate focuses more on the way that marriages lock people up, but Guy focuses more on the results of people caring too much about other's perception.

In “the Story of an Hour” Mrs. Mallard comes to the realization that her husband's death has given her freedom.

This is mostly illustrated by her whispering “Free, free, free! Free! Body and soul free!” after the initial shock of her husband's death passes. The story also depicts this by describing the calm, open and free nature and surrounding, which creates a light and free atmosphere. This is clearly done to make the reader understand what she is feeling and thinking to later deliver a moment of shock to the reader.

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On the contrary Madame Loisel in “The Necklace” cannot come to terms with the fact that she is not among the wealthy. The story starts off describing her as a powerful, beautiful woman who should have all the wealth that she has ever wanted but cannot get any of it because of the fact that an error of fate has happened. The story mentions Madame Loisel being unhappy all the time, due to the fact that she felt like she was meant for a life of refinement and luxury.

She dreamed of great drawing-rooms dressed with old silk, filled with fine furniture which showed off trinkets beyond price, and of pretty little parlours, filled with perfumes. The first couple of paragraphs often mention how worn out her husband and the living place is and how much she would like that to change. All of that heavily implies that she is just not okay with accepting her current situation.

Mrs. Mallard suffers the horrible faith of death due to growing too accustomed to the fact that her husband has died. She clearly felt like she just got rid of a big burden and within a moment it was taken away from her. She died because of the great shock of not being able to live her life with freedom.

In “The Necklace” Madame Loisel wastes ten years of hers and her husband's life doing hard labor due to caring too much about the way that she is perceived by the wealthy. The fact that she cares too much about the opinions of the rich is made clear when she replies “And what am I supposed to wear when I do go?” to her husband after he explains that it would be a great chance for her to meet some important people. This shows clearly how she cares too much about the way that she is perceived by the rich. After losing the necklace of her friend, she decides to make herself and her husband work hard and purchase an identical necklace to give back, rather than just tell the truth and just maybe ruin her relationship with the person. She clearly suffered due to her own selfishness.

Both stories have clear parallels and paint a good picture of the problems with our society and how humans are concentrated on the wrong things due to the societies pressure. The females, protagonists of both stories suffered horrible fates due to their own troubled personalities and the ways that they looked outwards at the world. These characters were certainly crafted this way to illuminate the issues of our society and the problems of our mindsets.