"A Jury of Her Peers" by Susan Glaspell & "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin

Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Mallard from “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell and “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, respectively, are both women who were mentally imprisoned by their husbands.  Through death, or in Mrs. Mallard’s case an assumption of, they are freed only to find themselves in new chains.   While both women find freedom in the death of their husbands, Glaspell’s Mrs. Wright sits in a solemn silence while Chopin’s Mrs. Mallard “[weeps] at once, with sudden, wild abandonment.”   Mrs. Wright is a woman who we are led to believe found her freedom in the own murder of her husband.  She saw this act as an “eye for an eye.”   Though she is free from her husband’s bondage she is now a prisoner of not only the local jail but also her own abandonment of reason.   Mrs. Mallard is a woman who is freed by a random chance accident only to be bonded by her own faulty heart which is overtaken by the joy of her new found freedom.

We are given few clues as to the detailed characteristics of Mr. Wright and Mr. Mallard.   Through the eyes of Mrs. Wright’s acquaintance Mrs. Hale we are shown a dark and unloving side of a man who was hard and distant.  Through the narration of Chopin we learn that Mr. Mallard is a man with the same approach.  In Glaspell’s story Mr. Wright’s demeanor is off-handedly forgiven as just the way things are.  The same forgiveness is not shown to Mr. Mallard.

A similarity hidden behind these short stories comes from the authors themselves.  Per our textbook, Glaspell is a feminist author who wrote on the negative destructive effects that male-female relationships have on women.  “Running through much of her work are strongly feminist ideas, based on a critique of the power – personal, social and political-that men possess and that women are denied.”   This attitude was carried through Glaspell’s career.

Chopin was an author who also wrote outside of the comfortable view of her time.  Her best known work The Awakening is a story of adultery and miscegenation.  Chopin’s work was not as well received as Glaspell’s.  “Indeed, the critical disapproval was so intense that Chopin published no further works, even though she was at the height of her literary power and lived five years after the controversy.”