EWRT 1C Class 14

The Short Story

AGENDA Author Introductions:

Kate Chopin

Gabriel García Márquez

Short Story Discussions:

“The Story of an Hour”

“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”

Historical Context

Literary Style

Questions

QHQ

Kate Chopin

Katherine O’Flaherty was born

February 8, 1851, in St. Louis.

Her father was an Irish merchant

and her mother was the daughter

of an old French family. Chopin’s

early fluency with French and

English, and her roots in two

different cultures, were important

throughout her life.

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening: An Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism. Edited by

Margaret Culley. New York: W. W. Norton, 1976.

Early life Kate’s father was killed in a train

accident in 1855 (the imagined

effect on her mother was later

depicted in “The Story of an

Hour”).

At the age of eighteen, Kate was

known as one of St. Louis’

prettiest and most popular. Her

diary, however, shows that the

stress of the social pressures to

be feminine pushed against her

passion to read her favorites:

Victor Hugo, Dante, Molière, Jane

Austen, and Henry Wadsworth

Longfellow.

Marriage, Family, and Money

At twenty, Kate married Oscar

Chopin, a young,

cosmopolitan businessman.

Kate gave birth to five sons

and a daughter. Important

themes in her fiction

include motherhood’s joys

and demands, as well as

societal restraints on

women.

Her husband, worn down by

financial worries, died in

1882, leaving Kate with a

huge debt and six children to

raise alone.

Life’s Work The death of her husband, and soon after, her mother,

and her own unconventional ideas demanded that she make her own way. She started her first short story in 1888, and became a published author in 1889 when her poem “If It Might Be” appeared in the journal America. Her stories and sketches from this early period show that she questioned traditional romance. “Wiser Than a God” depicts a woman who chooses a career as pianist over marriage. Other stories portray a suffragist and a professional woman who try to determine their own lives. Chopin’s friends during this period included “New Women”—single working women, suffragists, and intellectuals—who doubtless influenced her previously private questioning of women’s role in society.

Kate Chopin’s reputation as a writer faded soon after her death. Her 1899 novel, The Awakening, was out of print for 50 years. By the late 1960’s, however, Norwegian writer Per Seyersted rediscovered Chopin and edited The Complete Works and a critical biography in 1969. Chopin’s reputation blossomed, and her novel is considered a classic, taught in university literature and women’s studies courses. Largely through the attention of scholars and critics, Chopin’s work has enjoyed a renaissance. Her writing illustrates a variety of feminist concerns: the tension between individual freedom and social duty; the stifling quality of unequal marriage; the hypocrisy of the sexual double standard; women’s desire for creativity and independence.

Historical Context: The Woman Question

"The Story of an Hour" was published in 1894, an era in which many social and cultural questions occupied Americans' minds. One of these, referred to as the "Woman Question," involved which roles were acceptable for women to assume in society. Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859) had further incited this controversy. Darwin's theory of evolution was used by both sides of the issue: some argued the theory supported female self-assertion and independence; others felt the theory proved that motherhood should be the primary role of a woman in society.

The suffrage movement (1848-1920) endeavored to achieve voting equality for women, yet mainstream Victorian culture still supported the self-sacrificing wife, dependent on her husband and devoted to her family, as the ideal of femininity.

Literary Style:

Point Of View and Setting

“The Story of an Hour” is told from a detached, third-person limited point of view through Louise, the only character whose thoughts are accessible. At the beginning of the story, Louise is unable to consider her own position in the world. As she becomes aware of her emotions and new situation, the reader gains access to her thinking, and therefore, her character. At the end of the story, the reader is abruptly cut off from her thoughts, as Chopin manipulates the narrative point of view to underscore the theme of the story.

Setting Chopin does not offer many clues as to where or when the

action of the story takes place, other than in the Mallard's

house. This general setting supports the theme of

commonly accepted views of the appropriate roles for

women in society. Given Chopin's other works and the

concerns she expresses about women's role in marriage in

this story and in other writings, the reader can assume that

the story takes place during Chopin's lifetime, the late

nineteenth century. Chopin was known for being a local

colorist, a writer who focuses on a particular people in a

particular locale. In Chopin's case, her stories are usually

set among the Cajun and Creole societies in Louisiana. For

this reason, "The Story of an Hour" is usually assumed

to take place in Louisiana.

Group Discussion

Chopin: Tension, Paradox, Irony,

Ambiguity, Questions and QHQs

A Brief

Summary

Discuss the story through one

critical lens

New Criticism

Feminist Criticism

Psychoanalytic Criticism

1. Tension

2. Paradox

3. Irony

4. Ambiguity

New Criticism: The Formal Elements

Feminist TheoryTaking upon Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas in The Second Sex, the

contingency of Louise’s being is killed off with her husband’s

supposed death, allowing her to “live for herself” without any

“powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence” invoked by

patriarchy [. . .].

Basically, joy conditioned by patriarchy is a specific joy whose

process of attainment involves the relinquishment of patriarchy.

The patriarchy in Louise’s marriage has caused her so much

dissatisfaction, that her idea of “joy” has become redefined. As a

result, the attainment of joy requires the condition of removing that

dissatisfaction—a condition originating from patriarchy’s presence

and influence.

Psychoanalytic Theory

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression

and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes,

whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue

sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of

intelligent thought.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully.

What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But

she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the

sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

Psychoanalytic Theory

Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently

Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-

sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and

did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's

piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his

wife.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the

joy that kills.

Discuss trauma in the story. Who suffers it? How and why?

According to the Webster dictionary, trauma is defined as a “bodily

injury” or a “mental shock.” Mrs. Mallard is primarily the person who

experiences both. The story suggest that Mrs. Mallard is a young woman

who feels confined within her marriage as well as her life. In the beginning

when she discovers that her husband had just died, she cried at first but

appears to be very nonchalant after. Mrs. Mallard then realizes that she

sees the world more differently now. While facing the idea of her husband’s

death, her mental shock brings out a positive effect: “But she saw beyond

that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to

her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in

welcome.” Mrs. Mallard no longer needs to live life according to her

husband, but instead be able to live out her life the way she wants. She

ends up dying which leads to the ultimate trauma, due to the thought of her

being happy and independent.

Discuss trauma in the story. Who suffers it? How and why?

“When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her

slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath:

"free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had

followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her

pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every

inch of her body.”

The trauma [suffered] by Louise [shows in that] the only joy that she

experiences is from death. The idea of her joy coming from death with her

husband’s passing […] speaks to the lack of love that is in an ideal marriage.

After hearing of her husband’s death, she isolates herself in her room to

comfort herself, where the exhaustion from both mental and physical aspects

of Mrs. Mallard’s life are released. One moment when I feel Chopin illustrates

how oppressed Louise was in the story is when she whispers about being free.

Discuss Mrs. Mallard as a sympathetic character or as a

cruel and selfish character. How might your own gender,

age, class or ethnicity influence your response?

1. I see Mrs. Mallard as a sympathetic character. […] It seems that she is

enslaved to her husband. She does admit that she loved him at times and

that she will cry when she sees “the face that had never looked save with

love upon her, fixed and gray and dead” (Chopin). This shows that she did

have feelings for him and she is not some cruel woman who married to

become a wife- there was love involved, at least on her end at some times.

What is truly disappointing is how their marriage repressed her, how she

realized that after his “death” she could live a more free life, caring about

herself. Her marriage was depressing as she was “shudder[ing] that life

might be long.”

2. In “The Story of an Hour,” I believe Mrs. Mallard to be a mix of both cruel

and selfish but also a sympathetic one. She is cruel and selfish because

she is happy that her husband has just died and she can’t wait to live the

coming years for herself.

Do you think Chopin's critique of the institution of

marriage, as expressed by Louise, is applicable today?

“There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would

live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that

blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right

to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel

intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in

that brief moment of illumination.”

1. Chopin’s critique of marriage is that you lose a sense of individuality. She

implies that being married means to live for your partner when Louise

thinks that from now on “she would live for herself.” She implies that in a

marriage relationship, both men and women “believe they have a right to

impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.” Most importantly, she

regards this imposition of will as criminal, despite intentions.

2. Although Louise’s marriage with Brently was kind and loving, both may still

feel a sort of oppression with one another due to the fact that marriage,

even today, holds this sort of “ground rules” we “have to” abide by- an

institution of marriage, as mentioned in the story.

QHQ: What was the importance of the

open window in Mrs. Mallard’s room?

“There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable,

roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a

physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed

to reach into her soul.”

“There were patches of blue sky showing here and there

through the clouds that had met and piled one above the

other in the west facing her window.”

“‘What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open

the door.’

‘Go away. I am not making myself ill.’ No; she was

drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.”

Gabriel García Márquez1928-2014

Gabriel José García

Márquez was born on March

6, 1928 in a small coastal

village in Colombia. The

eldest of twelve children,

García Márquez was reared

by maternal grandparents.

He grew up with an

extended family of aunts

and great aunts who, like his

grandmother, were constant

storytellers of local myth,

superstition, and legend.

Career García Márquez’s literary development occurred

concurrently with his career as a journalist. In 1954, he returned to Bogotá, where he worked for El Espectador and wrote short stories in his spare time. One of them, “Un día después del sábado” (“One Day After Saturday”), won for García Márquez a competition sponsored by the Association of Artists and Writers of Bogotá. In 1955, his first novel was published. La hojarasca (1955; Leaf Storm and Other Stories, 1972) presents life in the fictional town of Macondo from 1900 to 1930. García Márquez’s fiction did not attract significant attention outside literary circles until the publication of his masterpiece, Cienaños de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1970).

The Garcia Marquez ''boom'' was fueled by a number of developments, both in popular culture and in critical scholarship, which made it easier for many readers to embrace a work of ‘‘magic realism,’’ and an author from a non-English speaking culture. The late 1960s are characterized as a period of intense cultural change, in which traditional values of all kinds were challenged. College campuses were a particular focus for this controversy(occasionally via violent confrontations between law enforcement and student political protesters), but it also found expression through passionate debates within the scholarly disciplines, debates in which the most basic assumptions were questioned, and apparently radical changes were given serious consideration.

Historical Context

In literature departments, one result was an effort to

expand the ''canon''—the list of ''classic'' works whose

study is traditionally considered to form the necessary

basis of a liberal arts education. Critics charged that,

with few if any exceptions, the canon had excluded

women and people of color from the roll of ''great

authors,'' as well as writers from poor or working-class

backgrounds and those from non-European cultures.

Efforts to expand the canon, to include a more diverse

blend of cultural voices among the works considered

worthy of serious scholarship, have continued for over

thirty years. Garcia Marquez can be seen as an early

beneficiary of this trend.

Finally, much like the last stories we have discussed, this

story has a context within Garcia Marquez's own career. It

was written in 1968, a year after his sudden fame.

One reading of ‘‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings''

sees it as a satirical account of his own encounter with

instant fame, as a commentary on the position of the

creative artist in modern culture. Here, the ‘‘old man’’ is the

artist, while his "wings" stand for transcendence, greatness,

truth, beauty—that which is valuable in art. The villagers are

‘‘the public,’’ greedy for whatever ''magic'' he might bring

them—but who insist on having it on their own terms. Rather

than accepting him as he is, they treat him as a carnival

attraction and look for ways to profit from his odd celebrity.

Literary Style

Style: Magical Realism Magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in

which magical elements are merged with a realistic environment in order to access a deeper understanding of reality. These magical elements are often explained like they are normal occurrences; this allows the "real" and the "fantastic" to be accepted in the same stream of thought. In combining fantastic elements with realistic details, a writer like García Márquez can create a fictional “world” where the miraculous and the everyday live side-by-side—where fact and illusion, science and folklore, history and dream, seem equally “real,” and are often hard to distinguish. The form clearly allows writers to stretch the limits of possibility, and to be richly inventive.

Magical Realism Continued

The uncertainty (or ambiguity) of magical realism applies not

just to the old man, but evidently to life itself, as it is lived in

this timeless, nameless village. It seems to be a place where

just about anything can happen (for example, a young

woman can be changed into a spider for disobeying her

parents)—or at least, it is a place where everyone is quite

willing to believe such things happen, and to act as though

they do happen. This impression is partly a result of García

Márquez's use of narrative voice.

Setting The time and place of this story are undetermined.

The characters' names suggest a Spanish-speaking

country, and a reference to airplanes indicates that

we are somewhere in the twentieth century; but

beyond these minor details, the setting is

fantastical. The narrator tells of events in the past,

using the phrase ''in those times'' in a manner

common to myths and legends. These associations

help prepare the reader for the story's "magical"

elements by suggesting that this is not a factual

history to be taken literally, but a tale of the

imagination where the usual rules may be

suspended.

The Narrator For the most part, the story seems to be told by an

“omniscient observer” of third-person fiction—a narrator

who knows all the necessary facts, and can be trusted to

present them reliably. When this kind of narrator gives the

reader information, the reader generally believes him or

her.

However, in this case, the inconsistencies in the narrative

voice reinforces the ambiguity within the story. The narrator

is, after all, the "person" presenting all this odd imagery to

the reader, and readers habitually look to the narrator for

clues to help find a proper interpretation.

The NarratorReaders rely on a narrator for clues about “how to take” elements in the story that may be unclear. But this narrator seems determined to be untrustworthy, and leaves us uncertain about important events. Without telling us how, he treats everything that happens as though it “makes sense.” Though he is habitually ironic in his view of the “wise” villagers' beliefs, at other times, he seems no more skeptical than the villagers. For example, the story of the spiderwoman seems at least as fantastic as that of an old man with wings, but the narrator gives no suggestion that her transformation is particularly unusual and seems to expect the reader to accept this ''magical'' event as if it presented no mystery at all.

Reliable or Not?

Are we to conclude that this fantastic

transformation from human to spider actually

happened? Or that the narrator is now as

deluded as the villagers? Or even that he is

purposely lying to us? As the label “magic

realism” suggests, some elements of the

story seem meant to be approached with the

simplistic “logic” of fantasy, while others are

depicted with all the complexity and

imperfection that mark “real life.”

Group Discussion

Garcia Marquez

Speculate on the identity of the “old man.”

Although I do not believe he is an angel, I do believe that the

purpose of his appearance is to make the people in the story

(and the reader) question religion. When we usually think of

angels, we think of holy and pure creatures. The man in the story

is described as “a very old man, lying face down in the mud,”

(Marquez) an image which illustrates the complete opposite of

what is typically expected of an angel. This contradiction is the

first piece of evidence about the man which makes us question

his presence. Another contradiction is that when Father Gonzaga

greets him in Latin, the old man does not “understand the

language of God” (Marquez).

How does the manner in which Garcia Marquez treats the traditional idea of angels in "A Very Old Man with Enormous

Wings" compare with the way angels are represented or interpreted elsewhere, in some other work or media?

Angels are usually portrayed as higher beings that people should be obligated

to revere. In “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” Marquez goes against

this traditional portrayal by depicting the angel as a mere attraction for cheap

entertainment. The angel is detached from its traditional appearance,

described as having “a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth

in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took

away any sense of grandeur he might have had.” The suggested loss of

“grandeur he might have had” becomes accentuated with Pelayo and

Elisenda’s decision to place the angel among the chicken coops and on

display for the people to watch. As a result, Marquez is able to deconstruct the

idea of angels as superior to human beings, as he gives the character of the

angel an exploitable vulnerability similar to that of common animals. However,

as the angel endures hardship, his tenacity proves it worth after he survives

the harsh winter and, eventually, takes flight. With this, the idea of angels is

redefined as humans who, at the end of the day, are still just as motivated to

“take flight” and live their life.

1. Tension

2. Paradox

3. Irony

4. Ambiguity

New Criticism: The Formal Elements

What role do the common people play in the story? (A psychoanalytical interpretation.)

The common people in the story are, as far as communities go, self-

interested and egocentric. In this sense one can say that they are

representative of the Id.

The neighbors see the old man as a source of entertainment. Upon first

laying eyes on him, they “[have] fun with the angel, without the slightest

reverence, tossing him things to eat through the openings in the wire as if he

weren’t a supernatural creature but a circus animal.” They see him as a

lesser being whose only purpose is to amuse and to satisfy their Id-driven

desires for entertainment.

They are also an instance of a classic utilitarian dilemma; they seek to utilize

the old man to improve the community with little regard for the his own

wellbeing.

They finally brand him with iron, the quintessential symbol for ownership of

another living being (think cattle and the slave trade), which reinforces the

utilitarian dilemma of causing one to suffer for the benefit of the many. This

can also be read as an Id-driven impulse to ensure that they maintain the

Discuss trauma in the story. Who suffers it? How and why?

The parents of the sick child were traumatized. The old

man with wings may or may not have been an angel, but

taking an odd creature into custody of a hen house was

the first mistake they made. Without knowledge of, the

parents indirectly helped nurture the old man back until he

was able to fly again. Confining the “angel” was no help to

them as it brought them trouble from neighbors and

curious eyes. The creature was never bothered by them

unless touched/burned by ignorant people.

QHQs

1. Q: What do we know about angels?

2. Q: Was the old man really an angel?

3. Q: Why did Marquez depict an angel as an old man

instead of the traditional young and attractive angel?

4. Q: What role did Father Gonzaga play in this short story?

5. Q: Why did the townspeople prefer seeing the human-

spider more than the angel?

6. Q: If God one day choses to visit earth and walk among

us, how will we know he is God? Will he have to pass

certain tests we expect God to pass, just like the villagers

with the angel?