In the story “Story of An Hour” by Kate Chopin, the wife Mrs. Mallard of course mourned her husbands death in such sorrow, weeping in her dear sisters arms for comfort of her loss. When she was finally alone in her room staring out the window she mourned a little more, until she felt a sense of freedom come over her. She no longer felt trapped in the hold that marriage has, especially at that point in time. the wife in “Story of An Hour” and the wife in the poem by Emily Dickinson “The Wife” correlate;
“She rose to his requirement, dropped
The playthings of her life
To take the honorable work
Of woman and of wife.”
Those lines are so powerful, because they emphasize on what being a wife meant, having to let go of your own sense of self to dedicate yourself to a man, a husband. Those words in “The Wife” is what Mrs. Mallard had to do in her marriage, once her husband had passed she knew she would be free from being dutiful to a person other than herself.
