The Story of an Hour and a Sorrowful Woman: the Plight of Women
The Story of an Hour and A Sorrowful Woman: the plight of women From time to time, marriage is not always bring happiness to a couple, also makes a couple to be imprisoners with the commitment. The marital bonds of intimacy, respect, and trust must be developed, nurtured and enforced. When this fails, most couples are given a chance to make important changes.
In a sorrowful woman, character of a woman is center around the idea of marriage, motherhood and housewife. As the author begins actually with an epigram emphasizing with the ironic of the plot “once upon a time, there was a wife and mother one too many”.The secluded woman had already the fulfillment of being married and having a child, but was now at the point of not wanting that kind of life anymore. The woman is unhappy with her marriage and isolates herself from her family. She is being so sad and depressing. The loneliness and solitude was that she had wanted out of her family member role throughout the story. She was placed to bed the first night and was given a sleeping draught that was guaranteed to put her to rest swiftly after informing her husband that she wanted to be away and out of the sight of him and their little boy.
She could not any longer fulfill her role of being a mother to her child. She did not know how to be a loving mother to him anymore. For many days straight the wife remained there alone and only appears to wonder throughout the house aimlessly a few short times when the house was vacant. She seems to be a very selfish and self-centered person who cares only for herself. It seems like the end of her world. I mean she doesn’t want to improve or fix her relationship with her husband and also she ends up her duty with her child. In contrast, I see that the woman, Mrs.
Mallard, in the story of an hour has a different moment from the wife in sorrowful woman story. She is a normal housewife who depends on her husband. The news of her husband’s death gives her freedom and sets her free from restraints, marriage and a lifetime of dependency. After she knew about her husband’s death, she locks herself in her room. She thinks about what life is going to be like from now on.. She concealed her happiness.
In the story, As Mrs. Mallard is sitting in her chair whispering over and over “Free body and Sole free”.This shows her experience of a freedom. For probably the first time in a long time she feels truly happy, happy that she is now free from her husband and the life they once shared together. Her death is due to shattered dreams brought on with shock. The doctors announce that she had died of heart disease “- of joy that kills”. This concluding line is probably the most interesting.
The reader knows, through the limited omniscient narrator, the true sentiments of Mrs. Mallard and the irony lays in the fact that she could not endure the confines of her superficial marriage.From these two authors, from different time periods, A sorrowful woman and The story of an hour are both similar pieces of literary work in that both stories offers a revealing glimpse of extremely unhappy marriages. They are so unhappy with the lives they lead. For female protagonist in “A sorrowful woman”, her marriage was a torment. Both of women are imprisoned in their own marriages and even more so in their own minds, which eventually lead them to death. It shows that marriage does not always bring happiness they expect like a fairytale.
