What is the central idea of "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin?

Kate Chopin may be considered an early feminist. In "The Story of an Hour" she posits the idea that a woman's life may actually be better without a husband. It was a radical idea at the time. In the Victorian age it was assumed that women were the lesser sex and that men needed to make the important decisions in a family. In this way, Chopin, although she was writing in the late 19th century...

Kate Chopin may be considered an early feminist. In "The Story of an Hour" she posits the idea that a woman's life may actually be better without a husband. It was a radical idea at the time. In the Victorian age it was assumed that women were the lesser sex and that men needed to make the important decisions in a family. In this way, Chopin, although she was writing in the late 19th century could be considered a modernist writer who paved the way for later American modernist and feminist writers such as Edith Wharton and Sylvia Plath.

Initially, Mrs. Mallard grieves over the sudden news that her husband has died. After mulling the news for a while she comes to a surprising and, to many readers of the late 19th century, a shocking realization. She is now free to plan her life. The benevolent "repression" she had been experiencing while her husband lived is gone. Whereas she believed life might be too long, she now prays for the opposite. She whispers quietly to herself, "Free! Body and soul free!" Unfortunately, her prayers are ignored as her husband reappears, and she dies from a heart attack at the trauma of having her dreams of freedom vanish.

Her story is quite common today. Any number of novels, stories and movies have dealt with the longed for emancipation of a woman in a restrictive world ruled by men. In the 19th century, however, the story was ahead of its time. Women wouldn't even achieve the right to vote for a few more decades.