1. Paige Seligman
Dr. Nicole Blair
TLIT 390 A
11 June 2014
The Deadly Pressure on Women in Literature
Throughout history women have been seen as only mothers and caretakers. They have
been treated as substandard citizens, lowered on society’s hierarchy, and constricted and
demoralized by patriarchal roles and duties. Woman in literature, especially short stories, are
often found in strongly repressed roles to ‘deepen’ their characters’ personalities in a small
amount of time. They are often seen to the audience as one-dimensional, demure, homely and
revolved, in one way or other, around a marriage. Both Emily and Mrs. Mallard are placed into
these characterizations with no way to escape the roles life has placed on them. “A Rose for
Emily” and “The Story of an Hour” have dominant female characters who, when faced with the
pressure patriarchal oppression society has placed on them, find death to be the only solution.
Although Emily Grierson and Mrs. Mallard die for different reasons both found drastic means
the only answer in the oppressed lives they were given.
The settings in these short stories take place roughly during the same time period; the late
1800’s to early 1900’s. “A Rose for Emily” was published in 1930 whereas “The Story of an
Hour” was published in 1984. In “A Rose for Emily” the narrator takes us from the present time
at Emily’s funeral to when Emily was a young woman in 1894. While “The Story of an Hour”
doesn’t explicitly give a timeline like “A Rose for Emily”, it gives hints towards its time period
though the language used, such as “grip-sack” and the use of telegrams versus other means of
communication. These hints allude to the time of the novel being in the late 1800’s or near the
present time when the story was published.

2. Seligman 2
During this time Second-Wave Feminism was just ending and Third-Wave Feminism
was just beginning. It was a time of change. Tensions were running high between the genders
and the rules placed on women were just beginning to change. Women had just started to achieve
the right to vote and find reasonable jobs in workplace. Women’s desire to break free from their
caretaker roles and discover their limits were stirring. The historical roles of females were being
questioned and women’s rights were beginning to take shape. Literature also began to take a
more prominent view of women and women authors were becoming more commonplace.
While Kate Chopin’s main female character seems very demure and feminine at first, her
point of view gives way to a very feminist ideology and her way of thinking is why Mrs.
Mallard’s is forced to reject the patriarchal role she was placed in once she tastes freedom.
William Faulkner, on the other hand, was a male writer and his views on women, although
modernistic with prominent roles, his characters tended to have more patriarchal personalities.
Despite the authors’ views on women both female characters die because of the roles they are a
part of. Mrs. Mallard dies to avoid a constricted life of patriarchal marriage while Emily uses
death as a means to keep her oppressed fantasy alive until she too dies.
In “The Story of an Hour”, the first sentence places Mrs. Mallard into her patriarchal role.
“Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to
her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death” (Chopin, 1). By stating that Mrs.
Mallard has heart trouble it automatically classifies her has weak and demure. She is the kind of
person who needs to be taken care of and can’t handle bad news of any kind. This is a very
classic view towards woman in general. Women are usually stereotyped to be weak, overly
emotional and need to be protected. The other characters reinforce this idea by attempting to let
Mrs. Mallard down gentle with the news of her husbands’ death.

3. Seligman 3
At first Mrs. Mallard seems to reinforce the ideas of her womanly role after receiving the
terrible news. “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” (Chopin, 1). In front of other
characters, Louise seems to be the ideal image of a stereotypical woman, if not more fragile than
most woman. However, once she is alone in her room this ideal image flies out the window.
Once we enter Louise’s room the narration shifts from a third-person view to a focalized
one on Louise’s thoughts. This change in perspective shows us firsthand the change that is
happening in Louise. Once she is away from society’s grasp Louise takes in the true meaning of
her husbands’ death and her thoughts shift rapidly from grief to those of freedom:
“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. There was something coming to her and she
was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and
elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her
through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air … When she abandoned
herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over
and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of
terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright”
(Chopin, 1).
Louise Mallard is overcome with her newfound sense of freedom from the constraints of her
marriage that she finds it exhilarating, dangerously so. As the patriarchal role that was forced
upon her diminishes she finds a strange joy even though she should be lost and grieving. Instead
of feeling distraught at the loss of her husband, Mrs. Mallard is freed from the constraints that

4. Seligman 4
marriage put on her and feels joyous. She has her whole life ahead of her with unlimited
possibilities and no husband to tie her down.
The author uses this irony of emotions in an ominous way. Chopin personifies this sense
of freedom in such a way that the feelings that overcome Louise take a near human form. The
feeling of freedom “approach[es] to possess her” while she “strive[s] to beat it back with her
will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been” (Faulkner, 1). This
unknown sense seems to have appeared from nowhere and is attacking her or, as critic Deneau
conveys, it is “clearly… some type of sexual experience, one that at first seems, except for the
anticipation, like a terrifying rape, but one that evolves into something sensually stimulating and
relaxing, and, of course, spiritually illuminating. In short, a rape seems to have an ironic
outcome” (Deneau, 210). This ironic emotion overtakes Louise, but she succumbs to it rather
than fight it and all of her considerations to reject this emotion are abandoned.
By personifying freedom in this ironic manner, it foreshadows a disastrous outcome. It is
as if Louise has fallen in love with freedom and her idyllic world free from the oppression her
husband brought. Louise is described as a very weak person but the feelings she is experiencing
are “monstrous” and “tumultuous.” These feelings bubbling up seem, not only dangerous for
such a small weak woman, but turn out to be deadly when she discovers her husband to be still
alive.
Mrs. Mallard set her ideals so high that she didn’t give room for any alternatives. She
brushes away all logic and feelings aside without a second glace, driving herself practically
insane from her new ideal life. By doing this Louise had set herself up for failure. Like critic
Berkove states, “Given her dissatisfaction with the best that life has to offer her and her
unrealistic expectations of absolute freedom, therefore, there is no other option for Louise except

5. Seligman 5
death.” (Berkove, 158). Mrs. Mallard had discovered a world where she could be free from the
patriarchal oppression and could not return to her old life once more.
The doctors believe that Louise died from “heart disease--of the joy that kills” but we the
audience know this to be untrue (Chopin, 2). Mrs. Mallard’s roller coaster of emotions drove her
to the brink of death and when she sees her husband and the weight of the shackles that enclose
around her become too much. Only the audience is aware of this irony behind her death which
shows that she did at some point love her husband and was not aware of any role to be part of
besides the one she lived, but when the call of freedom arrived it was too much for her body to
handle. Mrs. Mallard’s sudden realization of what life could be combined with her heart
condition, left death as the only viable solution.
In “A Rose for Emily,” death also seemed to be the only solution for Emily. Both Emily
and Mrs. Mallard live in male-dominated societies, and neither were allowed to live the life that
they wanted. However, instead of rejecting the patriarchal role given to her like Louise, Emily
embraced it to the extremes.
The story begins with Emily’s funeral. Everyone in town has decided to come but their
reasons are divided. “The men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the
women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-
servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years” (Faulkner, 1). These two
reasons immediately separate the genders into categories but also creates an isolation towards
Emily. Neither gender seems to be grieving over her death which is only reinforced by the fact
that she rarely left her home. None of the townsfolk have any connection to Emily so the
audience is left to determine who she was by the facts of her past.

6. Seligman 6
Emily’s life was ruled by her father. She was the “slender figure in white in the
background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a
horsewhip” (Faulkner, 3). Her life was governed by this man and his belief that no man was ever
good enough for his daughter despite Emily’s wish to be married. As a result, after her father’s
death she was left alone with no one to care for her (other than her male servant). She was so
scared of being left alone that she refused to acknowledge her father’s death and allow them to
take her father’s body for three days.
Emily was brought up by her strict father who dominated over her life. As a result, Miss
Emily didn’t know what it was like outside of her oppression and wouldn’t acknowledge the
option. Her father’s sudden death resulted in her realization that she had no one to care for her
and seems to be what eventually drove Emily mad.
Miss Grierson was never married, but always wanted to be. When her father died, she had
the freedom to find a man to marry, but her fear of being lonely only constricted her life and the
pressure from the town made her need to find a man imminent. As a result, Emily chose the first
man that showed interest in her after her father’s death; Homer Barron, "a foreman, a Yankee-a
big, dark, ready man, a Northerner, a day laborer” (Faulkner, 4).
Even after her father’s authority over her ended, Emily had pressure on her to find a
suitable man to marry. In fact the townspeople were “were not pleased exactly” when Emily “got
to be thirty and was still single” (Faulkner, 3). So, after the death of her father, her deepened
desire for marriage didn’t seem too unorthodox for the townsfolk.
However, her choice Homer " liked men, and it was known that he drank with the
younger men in the Elks' Club” and “was not a marrying man” (Faulkner, 5). The townsfolk

7. Seligman 7
disapproved of this union as a result and tried to put a stop to it but their relationship seemed to
progress regardless. When Emily realized, however, that Homer was going to end up leaving her
again she snapped and decided to do something drastic to make sure he never left. Emily bought
some rat poison and killed him.
Emily had already lost her father; the only ruling figure in her life. Her need for
companionship drove Emily to killing him because she saw it as the only way of having him by
her side for the rest of her life. Already a bit of a loner, Emily only further closed herself into her
house and away from society. She never needed to leave because her man servant would do all
the work. If she needed anything from town, he would pick it up for her. The townspeople did
not find this to be proper behavior, but did not openly object to it and so she was rarely seen until
she died and the depth of her insanity was left undiscovered until her death. Emily struggles
against the prepositioned patriarchal roles she was placed in and what was thought to be proper
and right for a lady to do. Eventually, she found that the only way she could gain freedom from
this society’s judgment of her was to shut out the rest of the world.
In addition to killing Homer, she kept his rotting corpse for over fifty years in one of her
upstairs bedrooms where no one would be able to find it. At the end of the story, the townspeople
bury Emily and search her house only to find decomposing Homer in her upstairs bedroom and
“in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and
leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of
iron-gray hair” (Faulkner, 8). Emily’s insanity was so severe that she wasn’t satisfied by just
having Homer in her house with her, she had deluded herself into thinking he was still alive and
slept with him long enough to leave a lasting indentation in the bed. This ending shows just how

8. Seligman 8
improper a woman Emily was and how her need for male companionship twisted her and ended
up making her improper.
Like Mrs. Mallard, Emily is introduced as the ideal stereotypical woman. She wishes to
be married, is seen with “affection” and as a “fallen monument” to the men. But, as the story
progresses, her perfect image is undone by the reader’s and townsfolk’s realization of her
insanity. As critic Curry states, “Emily and Faulkner collude in dismantling the structures that
bind one to a form of literature, to a patriarchal structure, to a common-sense language. In other
words, Emily daily refuses to participate in the symbol-making of her as a precious lady of the
Old South, an idol, and icon. Although she has almost thirty years to bury Homer Barron in the
ground, she simply does not” (Curry, 391). Her need for male-domination, even if it means
killing her boyfriend to have it, is what ultimately unravels the seemly stereotypical character in
“A Rose for Emily.” The discovery of how insane she has become in the end usurps the story’s
patriarchal role towards her character.
“The Story of an Hour” and “A Rose for Emily” are both short stories that delve into the
mentalities of two very different women both entangled in male-controlled lives. Each character
longs for freedom from the lives they are forced to live in by society’s rules. Louise Mallard is a
woman who gains an ironic sense of freedom from her husband’s death while Emily Grierson is
a woman who, finds freedom in shutting herself away from society’s judgment. Both women fall
in love with an ideal life and future that is unattainable to them and are driven to the extremes.
Driven insane by the male-dominated roles they are forced to live in both Louise and Emily pay
the ultimate price for their independence; death.

9. Seligman 9
Works Cited
Berkove, Lawrence L. "Fatal Self-Assertion in Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour.'." American
Literary Realism 32.2 (Winter 2000): 152-158. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed.
Janet Witalec. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” 1-2.
Curry, Renee R. "Gender and authorial limitation in Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily.' (Special
Issue: William Faulkner)." The Mississippi Quarterly 47.3 (1994): 391+. Literature Resource
Center. Web.
Deneau, Daniel P. "Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour.'." Explicator 61.4 (Summer 2003): 210-213.
Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Vol. 110. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web.
Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.” 1-8.