Kate Chopin Comparison

Have you ever had a bad experience with spiders, animals, cars, etc.? Do you feel like you will never be able to forget it? Do you think you see this fear everywhere you go? You’re not alone. People all over the world will always relate their pass experiences to their daily lives. You will always relate something traumatic. Kate Chopin relates her history to her stories. She, like everyone else, works their thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and religions into what they write and how they view the world.
In Kate Chopin’s biography she relates her history to her stories that she wrote. She writes about young women who struggle to realize who they are. “A tale, of a young woman who struggles to realize herself” (Wyatt 2). Although she grew up with “smart, independent, single women” (Wyatt 1) she wrote about women who didn’t have that luxury. She wrote about how she felt on the inside. She felt like she didn’t know herself. She felt lost especially because she lost a lot of people that was very close to her. She was left alone to herself many different times of her life. She was a loner. She even lost her best female friend; her only female friend. “There is no other evidence that Chopin had any other close female friendships” (Wyatt 1). Early in her life she lost her brothers and sisters. She then became the only child. Her father was killed in a train accident; which relates to the “Story of an Hour”. “It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of “killed” (Story of an Hour 1). In “The Story of An Hour” Josephine Mallard was told that her husband was killed in a railroad disaster. Chopin’s father “was killed two months later when a train on which he was riding crossed a bridge that collapsed” (Wyatt 1). This is a relation to her life.
Kate Chopin later lost her grandmother. She died three days before Christmas, the same year her only female friend was banished. Kate Chopin went through a lot, she was left alone, and she must have been very lonely. So her female characters portrayed how she felt in her life. She also portrayed the society that she lived in.
Divorce was not simple to have done back in this time. If a woman wanted to get divorced from her husband, her views were silent and over looked. In her biography “Victoria’s own mother had been the first women in St. Louis to obtain legal separation from her husband” (Wyatt 1). This relates to the “Story of an Hour” because when Josephine thought that her husband was dead she thought she was free. So she could be considered a part of something she could own something. She had a little bit of rights now. She didn’t have to go through the process of divorce. But when her husband showed up all that went away.
We will always remember our past, it will forever play a major part in the decisions, beliefs, and attitudes we have towards everything that will come afterwards. They will always affect how we think and what we say. We are our pasts.