Female Protagonists
Uploaded by Admin on Jan 22, 1999
The desire for freedom is a similar aspect of the female protagonists Louise Mallard, Mathilde Loisel, and Emily Grierson.
In Kate Chopin's, "The Story of an Hour," Guy DE Maupassant's, "The Necklace," and William Faulkner's, "A Rose for Emily," the female protagonist's have a desire for freedom. The stories are about three women living in patriarchal societies. Each character longs for freedom in a different way, but because of the men in their lives they are unable to make their own life decisions.
In "The Story of an Hour," Louise Mallard is a repressed married woman that has a heart condition. The reaction to her husbands presumed death is a sign that she is unhappy. After hearing the tragic news she goes up stairs to her room and looks out an open window and notices "new spring life", "the delicious breath of rain", and "countless sparrows twittering in the eaves." As she looks out the window among the storm clouds, she stares at patches of blue sky. "It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought." Louise is not grieving over her dead husband or having negative thoughts about her future. She realizes that she will have freedom through her husbands death and whispers over and over, "free, free free!" Her unhappiness is not with her husband, it is with her ranking in society because she is a married woman. Becoming a widow is the only chance she has to gain the power, money, respect, and most importantly freedom.
Mathilde Loisel's chances for freedom are decreased because she comes from a middle-class family of clerks. "She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, wedded by any rich and distinguished man; and she let herself be married to a little clerk at the Ministry of Public Instructions." Mathilde feels her marriage is beneath her and that she is worthy of a richer more powerful man. Because Mathilde is of a middle class family, she feels that she is rejected from societies social elite.
Mr. Loisel pampers Mathilde with a maid, gives her money to buy expensive clothes, and invites her to a ball that "The whole official world" will attend. Even though her husband spoils, her she still feels like a rich woman trapped in a poor woman's body. She feels that because of the way she looks it is a "mistake of...