Emily Dickinson’s poem “The Wife” and the short story “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin are particularly similar when it comes to exposing the sexist gender roles expected to be followed by women in the 18th and in the 19th century, and the erasure of their self identities in detriment of their marriage life.
In the first lines of the spenserian poem by Dickinson, she says “She rose to his requirement, dropped/ The playthings of her life /To take the honorable work/ Of woman and of wife.” As an allusion to a women who has dropped her entire identity and passions after marrying, where she referred as “playthings” — or in other words, something not worth to be taken seriously. And decided to perform the greatest “work” attributed to women in that era: Being an honorable wife.
Attributes which we see on the story “The Story of an Hour” by Chopin, where after one of the characters, Mrs. Mallard’s, receives the unfortunate news about her husband passing away in a train accident, she sinks into sadness and the feeling of abandonment. Revealing then, at a first glance, a certain vulnerability expected by a married women at that time.
Further, Dickinson says “If aught she missed in her new day/ Of amplitude, or awe / Or first prospective, or the gold / In using wore away” As a way to show some certain of disappointment and fear of missing not only the days that she had left in the past and her own individuality, but fear that the feeling for the husband — who now she had to look up for — would eventually wear away. Which we can relate to Chopin’s story, on the paragraphs 13-14, when after a short grief, Mrs. Mallard’s realizes that now she was free to be who she wanted to be again, without anybody to “impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.”
Finally, the last lines on the poem “It lay unmentioned, as the sea / Develops pearl and weed / But only to himself is known / The fathoms they abide.” Is a reference to all she had to abdicate in order to be a wife, and that only her husband would know about her failed dreams and unfulfilled hope. Which again can relate to the end of Chopin’s story, when after Mrs. Mallard’s realization that her husband was not death, she dies of a heart attack, the only individual joy she may have felt in her whole life.
