In “The Wife” by Emily Dickinson, the narrator talks about how she leaves her childhood behind in order to play the role of a wife. She implies the idea that being a wife is like making a great sacrifice of leaving behind any potential and possibilities you once had before becoming a wife. “If aught she missed in her day of amplitude, or awe, or first prospective, or the gold in using wore away”. These lines from the poem demonstrate the wife’s curiosity and questions of what could have been her potential or possibilities. Also, it shows how she is unhappy in her marriage but it’s something that is not talked about during that time period. “The Story of an Hour” relates to the theme of “The Wife” because of how both the women are unhappy in their marriage and how that is a topic, during that point in history, that was not talked about. But the wife in “the story of an hour” is filled with new found hope of independence after hearing about her husband’s death. She repeats the word “free” and is now happy over the thought of living a full long life. Both the poem and story show how women felt about the role of a wife and wondering about possibilities of life before becoming a wife.
Daily Archives: March 24, 2022
Gender inequality in Emily Dickinson’s “The Wife” and Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour. Emily Dickson’s poem “The Wife” demonstrates how marriage institutions perpetuate a privilege and inequality system for women. The poem depicts marriage as an institution governed by patriarchal rules, a fact that signifies gender inequality. The poem’s first line, “She rose his requirement, dropped the playthings of her life,” expounds an ideology that transitions from girlhood to becoming a woman, and then a wife prevents women from accessing self-dignity and freedom. Married women are considered their husbands’ possessions, which leaves them no choice but to comply with whatever rules their husbands impose on them. The resultant of explained ideology is a situation where women suffer emotional pressure. Emily’s poem contradicts a socially constructed ideology that marriage strengthens women with claims that it reduces women to mere men’s objects that abide blindly to her husband. Kate Chopin’s story “The Story of an Hour” illustrates the theme of inequality through Mrs. Mallard’s emotional state of mind. The story depicts the state of a woman suffering from her husband’s restrictions and confinement to home chores. Mrs. Mallard was overjoyed after receiving information that her husband was dead. “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment,” but then she began to feel free (Chopin n.p). She expresses her feelings for freedom by repeating the word “Free! Body and soul free!” (n.p). Readers expect Mrs. Mallard to mourn and grieve her husband’s demise, but the contrary happens because she knows her husband’s death meant her freedom. Mrs. Mallard’s emotions did not last long because her husband had not died. This realization caused her emotional breakdown and death.
The poem itself can be related to the emotional state of Mrs. Mallard in many ways since in the first stanza it can be seen when in the story it says “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. When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease — of the joy that kills.” This shows that referring to her emotional situation since she, seeing her husband enter and that absolutely nothing had happened to her, is something that would be difficult for anyone to process. At that moment, she knew that her freedom was over, that she would return to her previous life, that is before she learned of the “death” of her husband Brently Mallard. It was a very complicated emotional situation for her to see that everything changed radically again in her life. The story goes “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will.” upon a fellow-creature.” This is related to the last stanza of the poem since in the recently mentioned quote she clarifies that she only lived for her husband and by her own will, as her husband was the one who would dominate everything in the relationship, preventing that she can do anything she wants.
Back then, women were oppressed and had to abide by the males in their lives’ wishes. In “The Wife” the woman is stripped of her identity when she is married off and abides by her husband’s wishes. In “The Story of an Hour”, Mrs. Mallard’s husband dies and she becomes distraught with grief at first and end up mourning the loss of her husband. After she is over the initial shock and mourn, she locks herself in her room and ends up realizing that she is free of him and doesn’t have to abide by his every whim. Both characters are in similar situations in feeling trapped in their marriages and end up realizing how dim their personalities are in said marriages. In, “The Wife” she ends up mentioning giving up “the playthings of her life” in this sense she means everything that makes her, her including most of her personality and in “The Story of an Hour” she mentions on how dim her personality gets with being married off and spending the rest of her life trying to please a man that doesn’t love her and ends up realizing she has “a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely.” They are both inherently sad deep down and know that marriage traps them.
