kate chopin

Kate Chopin woke people up to the feelings and minds of women writers in the nineteenth century by crossing forbidden borders of the Victorian Era. Author and feminist Kate Chopin was born on February 8, 1850, in St. Louis, Missouri. The American writer wrote the short story “The Story of an Hour” in 1894 (Toth 5). Chopin lived during the Victorian Era and was a first hand witness to the suppression women faced in the late nineteenth century. Unlike …

…about the situation women were in a century ago. This short story was written at a time where it was common sense and tradition that women were inferior to men in status and opportunities (Petry 135). The reactions to her stories have changed over the past 100 years. Looking back on the critics changing views from outrage to admiration, it is easy to see how far we as a nation have come in accepting women as writers.