2.8: Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"

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Kate Chopin (1850–1904)

Links to an external site. by James Sexton and Derek Soles is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Links to an external site., except where otherwise noted.

Directions

Here, you will find the reading Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"

The story is a docx. file. I recommend either printing it our or annotating the digital copy on your computer, or taking notes on the story on a separate piece of paper.

While reading the story, keep these questions/ideas in mind:

While reading this story, please pay close attention to the author's use of mystery or enigma.
Do you see enigma being used?
What kinds of enigma are being used?
Does it enhance/detract from your enjoyment of the text?
What about the story do you like?
What about the story do you dislike?
What was the shock?
How does the author's background influence your read of the story?
Does she die from happiness or grief?

Author's Bio:

Katherine O’Flaherty Chopin was born in 1850 in St. Louis, Missouri, to an affluent family. She was formally educated in a Catholic school for girls. At age twenty, she married Oscar Chopin and moved with him to New Orleans. The couple eventually relocated to Cloutierville in 1879, an area where many members of the Creole community lived. The Chopins lived, worked, and raised their six children to gether until Oscar died unexpectedly in 1882, leaving his wife in serious debt. Chopin worked and sold the family business to pay off the debt, eventually moving back to St. Louis to be near her mother, who died soon after Chopin returned. After experiencing these losses, Chopin turned to reading and writing to deal with her grief. Her experiences in New Orleans and Cloutierville provided rich writing material, and during the 1890s, she enjoyed success as a writer, publishing a number of stories in the Local Color tradition. By 1899, her style had evolved, and her important work The Awakening, published that year, shocked the Victorian audience of the time in its frank depiction of a woman’s sexuality. Unprepared for the negative critical reception that ensued, Chopin retreated from the publishing world. She died unexpectedly a few years later in 1904, from a brain hemorrhage.