Losing Identity and Freedom in Marriage - Essay Example

? Losing Identity and Freedom in Marriage: The Discontent of Louise and Walter November 13, The idea of a blissful marriage is a sham. Chopin knew that and stressed this reality for nineteenth-century women in “The Story of An Hour,” while Thurber agreed and provided a male perspective in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” These authors have main characters that are trapped in their marriage. Louise does not have any notion of freedom, until her husband dies. Walter lives in the same page as Louise because he serves as a mere husband only. The form of these works is a short story, which fits the needs of Chopin and Thurber to explore complex themes without being limited by the form of poetry. These writers have the same writing style because day dreaming has become a tool for expressing their characters’ innermost desires and anxieties. The content of these stories have similarities in the themes of loss of identity and freedom because of marriage, though they have differences in settings and how their protagonists handled their man-versus-society conflicts. The form of the literature is the same because they are both short stories, which is an appropriate form because the authors need to explore their themes and characters more than poetry can give them. Clugston (2010) talked about the differences among stories, plays, poems, novels, and other forms of literature. Poems tend to be short and constrained in form, although free verse styles are available. Plays are performed and can rely on aspects of short stories. Chopin and Thurber must have chosen the short story format for the challenges it brings in maximizing words and symbolisms. Because they chose a short story form, these authors have to use symbolism and other rhetorical strategies to give a deeper meaning to their stories. The settings and symbols, for example, say something about the characters and the kind of lives they are living, or in the cases of Louise and Walter, not living. The short story can focus on one or more elements of literature that concentrates their impact on the audience. Chopin and Thurber are successful in using a short story form to convey enough details about the lives of unhappy married people. The styles of these works are the same because Walter and Louise are day dreaming a better life and their daydreams include symbols that explore the themes of identity and independence. Daydreaming is an important process of becoming for Walter and Louise. Louise, after sinking into the comfort of her chair, realizes the comforts of being free. Freedom is symbolized in the new ways that she sees the “tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air” (Chopin, 1894, par.5). Her daydreams indicate the fresh way she sees the world because she is a new person. Walter shares the same refreshed identity, each time he daydreams. Cheatham (1990) stressed that “Mitty seeks freedom through his daydreams” (italics in the original article) (p.609). Walter uses his daydreams to become different personalities that help him escape his life. These characters are daydreaming to feel free and to forge a strong individuality that is far from their realities. Despite these similarities, the writing styles of Chopin and Thurber differ because of their language that exposes age and generational differences between Louise and Walter. Louise is still young because she does not need any overshoes like Walter. She is only fragile because of her heart condition. Walter, on the contrary, experiences being talked down by his wife. When he tells her that he might be thinking, she just wants to take his temperature when they get home. For Walter’s wife, he is a senile old man who needs constant checking for failing health signs. The generations of these protagonists are also different because of the dissimilar settings. Louise hears peddlers, while Walter deals with garage boys. Walter also easily falls into several daydreams as his day goes by. He has the leisure to daydream constantly because he is a senior citizen with no need to think of family and workplace roles and responsibilities. Louise, as a young wife, used to have her hands full of taking care of their house and her husband. She has a young housewife’s concerns, while Walter has a senior-citizen husband’s concerns. Thus, these stories have different styles that depend on the time and age of the protagonists. The settings of the stories are different because Chopin focuses on the bedroom of the house and the house, while Thurber brings the audience to the common locations of Walter’s life as a husband. Setting is a powerful element in “The Story of an Hour.” It shows how Louise has been Mrs. Mallard all her life because of her confinement in their house. The feminist Simone de Beauvoir denounces domestic housework in The Second Sex: “Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition….The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present” (as cited in Deutscher, 2006, p.328). As a wife, all Louise knows is that she is controlled. Her husband controls her life through her household roles and tasks: “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” (Chopin, 1894, par.12). The house is his house. It is not Louise’s house, which means her identity is focused on being a passive wife only. Thurber uses different settings, but they designate the domestic servitude of Walter too. He seems to be the assistant of his wife, as he brings her to places, like the parlor, and as he follows her orders. Ellis (2006) underscored that Walter’s daydreams signify his loser status: “Part of Thurber’s technique is to present Mitty as a man who fails even as a dreamer… In reality, he is a man trying to deal with the fears and difficulties of a drab and disappointing life” (p.1). The real settings in Walter’s life show his domestication. Like Louise, his wife imposes her will on him. The content of these stories shows similarities in the themes of loss of identity and freedom because of marriage. The themes of unhappiness in marriage and loss of individuality are not openly discussed in these stories, until readers finish these stories, although along the way, freedom is more openly discussed in “The Story of an Hour.” Marriage is a cage that prevents Louise and Walter from being free. To be a wife for Louise means the death of her psychological well-being: “Psychological well-being includes feeling good about one’s self and one’s life, the sense that one is continuing to grow and develop as a person, the belief that life has meaning and purpose…” (Saunders & Kashubeck-West, 2006, p.99). Louise does not feel good about her “self” because as a wife, she is nobody. She is Mrs. Mallard, someone who has no separate identity. She cannot grow as a human being because she is confined to her gender roles. As a widow, she is free to start fresh and become her own person: “But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely” (Chopin, 1894, par.11). In marriage, there is bitterness; in widowhood, there is the elixir of happiness from being independent and free. Walter daydreams because he wants to be a different person, someone who is powerful and free. His different personalities in his daydreams are all beyond his own knowledge, status, and skills. Cheatham (1990) argued that that by being completely different, Thurber seems to desire a radical escape, the escape from mortality: “[Walter wants]...freedom from mortality itself, from death” (Cheatham, 1990, p.609). Like Louise, Walter cannot find himself as a person, while he is a spouse. He only follows what his wife tells him. As heroes in different cloaks, Walter escapes his own human existence. The characters use different ways to escape their dreary lives and to have more control over their happiness; however, they are different because Louise will never surrender to her own fate, like Walter does. Louise and Walter daydream to live a different and empowered life. Louise, however, focuses on the reality of her freedom, while Walter stays in the fantastic sense of his dreams. In his first dream, he is the commander of a “huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane” (Thurber, 1939, par.1). In the second daydream, he is a brilliant surgeon. These personalities are outside his skills and capacities. He is going out of his own real existence to become free. Louise does not imagine being another person entirely. She only plans the days as they will be hers, as someone who is real and living: “Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own” (Chopin, 1894, par.17). She remains factual in her daydreams, not spending a second on being an imagined person. Louise, in addition, does not aim to remain a wife. Walter faces the “firing squad” and stays a submissive spouse (Thurber, 1939, par.16), while Louise chooses to die. She dies with “the joy that kills” because she will never give up her freedom (Chopin, 1894, par.20). In this sense, Walter is a martyr husband, while Louise prefers to die for her own cause as a free woman. Mann (1982) argued that Mrs. Mitty, however, is not the antagonist in the conventional sense. She might be controlling because she does not get the attention she deserves from her daydreaming husband and because she loves him and wants to take care of him. Mann (1982) stressed that without Mrs. Mitty, Walter would have killed himself, since his daydreams lead to his neglect of his safety and health: “...Mitty is dangerously existing on the edge of insanity and/or suicide...” (p.357). Louise escapes an unloving husband, but Walter might have a loving wife. Their circumstances are not entirely the same. Using the same content, Chopin and Thurber both used metaphors to describe the themes and feelings of disempowerment and empowerment. Technology helps give control to Walter. The diverse machines in this story produce the same sound, “pocketa-pocketa,” which emphasizes their “technological presence” (Prinsky, 2004, p.2). Mitty gains control over these technologies, and in doing so, he controls his life (Blythe & Sweet, 1986, p.111). Control is something he lacks in his real life. He controls large airplanes, but ironically, he cannot even control his own car. Someone else parks his car, while his wife asks him to slow down his driving speed. Walter also wants to control a “huge, complicated machine” as a doctor (Thurber, 1939, par.7). This act questions Dr. Renshaw's ability as his doctor. For Walter, he does not need any overshoes and other medical tools. Nevertheless, Walter feels a sense of isolation. Even the hotel’s revolving door seems to “mock” him, because it makes a “faintly derisive whistling sound” when he leaves (Thurber, 1939, par.16). Technology and the people who made and use it own Walter’s life. In essence, he is completely disempowered. Chopin uses the season and nature to express freedom for Louise. Spring means the start of a new cycle. Louise begins a new life as a person who can control her existence. Furthermore, nature delights in freedom too: “The notes of a distant song which someone was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves” (Chopin, 1894, par.5). Birds flying and singing mean freedom and freedom is happiness. Louise does not have to be a caged bird. She can fly and sing her own song. The nature celebrates her freedom, so Louise dives into it and becomes one with the freedom that nature feels and brings to her. Walter and Louise share the same dilemma of being trapped in their marriages, which a short story format engagingly illustrates. Chopin and Thurber use the same style and format to explore what it means to be married in the neck. Walter and Louise have authoritarian spouses who disable them from being who they want to be. Louise, however, is more realistic in her dreams than Walter. She does not dream to be a different person like Walter. Furthermore, Louise will not accept marriage again. She dies and leaves her mortal life of servitude, while Walter prefers the shelter of his daydreams. Their domesticated lives stole their happiness, but only one could sacrifice everything to be truly free from society’s cage called marriage. References Blythe, H. & Sweet, C. (1986). Coitus interruptis: Sexual symbolism in 'the secret life of Walter Mitty. Studies in Short Fiction, 23 (1), 110-113. Retrieved from Literary Reference Center. Cheatham, G. (1990). The secret sin of Walter Mitty? Studies in Short Fiction, 27 (4), 608-610. Retrieved from Literary Reference Center. Chopin, K. (1894). Story of an hour. Retrieved from http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/hour/ Clugston, R. W. (2010). Journey into literature. San Diego, California: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Deutscher, P. (2006). Repetition facility: Beauvoir on women's time. Australian Feminist Studies, 21 (51), 327-342. Retrieved from EBSCO. Ellis, R.P. (2006). The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition, 1. Retrieved from Literary Reference Center. Mann, A. F. (1982). Taking care of Walter Mitty. Studies in Short Fiction, 19 (4), 351-357. Retrieved from Literary Reference Center. Prinsky, N. (2004). The secret life of Walter Mitty. Masterplots II: Short Story Series, 1-3. Retrieved from Literary Reference Center. Saunders, K.J., & Kashubeck-West, S. (2006). The relations among feminist identity development, gender-role orientation, and psychological well-being in women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 30 (2), 199-211. Retrieved from EBSCO. Thurber, J. (1939). The secret life of Walter Mitty. Retrieved from http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=100 Read More