Abstract

The Story of an Hour is one of the representative works on feminism by Kate Chopin, a famous American woman writer in the nineteenth century. The whole story happens in an hour, describing the protagonist Mrs. Mallard’s psychological changes when she is informed of the news of her husband’s death. This paper begins with a brief introduction to the authoress and this short story, and then makes an analysis of Mrs. Mallard’s psychological change from blind subjection to the awakening of her feminism to her shattered dream and final death, aiming to disclose the feminism underlying in the story and draw a conclusion that Kate Chopin expresses her best wish to challenge the patriarchal society and realize women’s independence and freedom through the creation of the heroine of the story.

Key words: Mrs. Mallard, psychological changes, feminism, Kate Chopin

摘 要

《一小时的故事》是19世纪美国著名女作家凯特•肖邦的女权主义文学的代表作之一。该小说情节浓缩在一个小时内，描述了主人公玛拉德夫人在获悉丈夫死讯后的心理变化。本文从简要介绍女作家和这个故事着手，继而分析了主人公由过去的逆来顺受到女性意识的觉醒再到梦想破碎最终死亡这一过程中的心理变化，揭示了隐藏在文中的女性主义思想，从而得出结论——凯特•肖邦通过塑造小说女主人公这一形象，表达了她试图挑战男权社会、实现女性的独立与自由的美好愿望。

关键词：玛拉德夫人；心理变化；女性主义；凯特•肖邦

1.    Introduction
It is undeniable that Kate Chopin is one of the most important feminist writers in the 19th century. Born in Saint Louis, Missouri, Kate Chopin lived with her widowed mother, grandmother, and her great-grandmother. All the three women are intelligent. Good family education equipped her with incredible versatility and rich literary attainments. Young Chopin was a real golden girl excelling at French, literature and music. She has read a lot of European classic writers’ works, such as Maupassant, Zola, Hugo, Goethe, Madame de Stael and so on, especially works of Maupassant. Influenced by French style, she was good at conceiving unexpected endings and had genius for excavating the psychology of the characters. Her sensitive nature and careful observation ability accumulated valuable materials for her later creative writings. Her masterworks include the Story of an Hour, Awakening, and Desiree’s Baby. Her heroines are usually citizens of Louisiana. Literary critics think Kate Chopin shows her loving care for females through her writings. In fact, because of her life and personalities, her writings are usually the embodiment of feminism.