Kate Chopin And William Faulkner example essay topic

Married To Be Alone? Although marriage is the symbol of two lives! | union, in the real world many people experience it in the opposite way. Gloria Steinem says: ! SSThe surest way to be alone is to get married. !" In! SSThe Story of an Hour!" by Kate Chopin, we can certainly realize how well the author describes the loneliness of a marriage.

There is another short story that also reflects the same point of view in a relationship; it is William Faulkner's! SSA Rose for Emily. !" Both works serve as strong evidence for Gloria Steinem's opinion. In! SSThe Story of an Hour!" Chopin implies an idea of that Mrs. Mallard lives as a prisoner.

Maybe it is because she grew up in a society in which women used to be properties of men, she has not noticed that fact until she receives her husband's death news. Marriage did not really unify emotionally her life with her husband's. This can be seen in the lines, ! SS And yet she had loved him! V sometimes.

Often she had not!" (8). She lived with this man, saw him everyday, slept by his side every night, but she did not even love him. Is that a how a relationship between a couple supposed to be? All those years she spent with her husband were as alone as being a prisoner; isn! |t that sad? But everything is solved (she thought so), as Mr. Mallard is dead, at last she can be liberated from that prison, !

SS Free! Body and soul free!" (8). This is not a usual expression of a woman whose husband has just died; here we can understand how alone she has been. If we learn more about Kate Chopin's background, we can find out that she lived in the nineteen century, when women's rights were limited. This story reflects the society in that age, then Mrs. Mallards represents the housewives in that time. Many of them get married with the man they don! |t love, and they spend their lives living alone emotionally.

In the other side we have another nineteenth century author, William Faulkner, who also wrote a short story about being alone, even his work does not focus that much on marriage. His idea of! SS getting married to be alone!" is very strong, too. In!

SSA Rose for Emily!" , Faulkner interprets loneliness by telling Emily's life. This lady goes through several stages in which no word better than! SS alone!" can describes, even though, she doesn! |t want to accept the truth. After her father's death, she kept his body as if he were alive, ! Ssthe did that for three days! K trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body!" .

She denied his father's death because she was afraid to be alone, she depended a lot on her father. Then she dated Homer Barron, it was a good chance to extricate herself from the loneliness.! SS [People of the town] learned that Miss Emily had been to the jeweler's and ordered a man's toilet set in silver, with the letters H.B. on each piece! K and [they] said, They are married.

!" By her acts we can clearly see that Emily really wanted to marry Homer, so she wouldn! |t be alone any more. But he was a homosexual man, in that time considered as! SS not a marrying man!" . And for her, there is no way she can let this opportunity go away, so she decides to have this man together with her until her death separates them. She killed him, with the strongest poison she could find, ! SSI want some poison, she said to the druggist!

K I want the best you have. I don! |t care what kind!" . By this act we can see that she prefers be together with a dead man than to spend her life alone, but wait a minute; wouldn! |t she be alone any way if she lives with a dead man? Well, maybe she did not consider it in that way.

The question is: would she be lonelier being with dead Homer or not doing it? Maybe if she has not lived with a dead man, she would have had her life more normal, even if she cannot find a husband after Homer, she could have had friends to share the rest of her life. Although it is not their intentions, the protagonists of both stories get ended up alone. Both of them even died being alone at the end of the stories. (Of course, Mrs. Mallard's death seems to be more tragic.) By telling two different stories in the same nineteen century time set, Kate Chopin and William Faulkner achieve to give shape to this irony: ! !" ~ Gloria Steinem.

Work cited Chopin, Kate.! SSThe Story of an Hour. !" 1894. Rpt. in The International Story: An Anthology with Guidelines for Reading and Writing about Fiction.

Ruth Spack. New York: St. Martin's, 1994.6-8. Chopin, Kate.! SSThe Story of an Hour. !" Spack 6!

V 8. Faulkner, William.! SSA Rose for Emily. !".