For most of
human history; and in the time in which “The Story of an Hour” takes place; society
has inflicted horribly oppressive standards upon women that suppressed them both
mentally and physically. Simply due the circumstances of their birth and gender
women have had to overcome many patriarchal boundaries such as being told how
to dress and act and speak an in what way to do those thing with which people, and
even who they could marry. Women in those times didn’t have the luxury of basic
human rights such as freedom of speech, guaranteed education, and or training in
skills that would make them employable. In this time a woman’s ideal role for a
man seeking a wife was one who was subservient to him and who would perform
domestic duties.

 “The Story of an
Hour” by Kate Chopin implies the dominating attitude over women and illustrates
how they can be trapped in unsatisfying marriages that they accept their roles
in by being passive spouses. Right from the opening of the story Mrs. Mallard is
presented in a way as to make you believe she is old and in bad shape
“afflicted with a heart trouble”. However, the truth is revealed that
Mrs. Mallard is youthful, but having “a fair, calm face whose lines
bespoke of repression”. Upon further reading we discover that Mrs.
Mallard’s heart problem might be the result of stress caused by her repression and
her arbitrarily enforced inferior status in the male-dominated culture that she
is living in. To provide some in text examples, Chopin says the young woman’s
face “bespoke repression”, and in paragraph number fourteen she tells us
that a “powerful will” was “bending” Mrs. Mallard.

He feeling of her husband and laid out and morphed very quickly.
The idea that she loved her husband quickly transitions into “I only loved him
sometimes” and then finally she courageously and truthfully decides that she
had often not loved him. This swift progression in Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts from
her despair and grief, her initial turn against her husband, and finally the full-blown
sense of freedom revealed with her “finally free” motto all provides evidence of
her repression.