2. 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
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
10. “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.
11. 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.
15. Feminist Theory
Taking 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.
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. 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.
22. 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.”
23. Gabriel García Márquez
1928-2014
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.
24. 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, Cien
años de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of
Solitude, 1970).
25. 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
26. 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.
27. 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.
29. 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.
30. 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.
31. 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.
32. 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.
33. The Narrator
Readers 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.
34. 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.”
36. 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).
37. 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.
39. 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
40. 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.
41. 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?
