Kate Chopin

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"Story of an Hour"

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Kate Chopin, mostly of Louisiana Creole background, is considered to be the forerunner of feminist authors of the 20^th century. From 1892-1895 she wrote short stories for children and adults that were published in magazines such as Vogue. She is most known for her novel The Awakening, which critics called morbid, vulgar, and disagreeable. Chopin uses local color since most of her fiction is set in Louisiana, and most of her work focuses on the lives of sensitive, intelligent women.

Surprise endings in stories are usually ironic. Irony is a contrast between what is expected and what actually happens. There are three types of irony in literature.

Verbal irony occurs when a character states one thing and means another.
Dramatic irony occurs when the reader knows more about a situation or character than the characters in the story do.
Situational irony is a contrast between what the reader expects to happen and what actually happens.

Read "Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin and be prepaired to discuss it in the next lesson. Click here for the text. Consider how a Psychoanalytic critic might view the text.

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You can listen to the audio file of this story here.

Works Cited

"The Story of an Hour" http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/h...oryofhour.html 2 Sept 2012
LibriVox http://librivox.org/short-story-collection-003/ 2 Sept 2012
Image source: Kate Chopin Image
Image source: The Story of an Hour