Women and Social Change

There is little argument that roles for women have changed over the past 100 years. From being granted the right to vote, the Women's Movement, equal pay for equal work legislation, and the slow but sure dismantling of the "glass ceiling" in organizations and corporations, women's roles are much expanded and more diverse than they were 100 years ago. In the short stories of Kate Chopin, Anton Chekov, and Guy de Maupassant, we see women whose roles and forms of expression were highly regulated by patriarchal societies and a rigid social order. Despite the obvious social changes for women since the time these stories were written, author Deborah Tannen (1994) contends that women are still subjected to many forms of oppression in a male-dominated society. Even so, the broadening of roles and increased expression of women over the past 100 years represents great progress for women than when The Story of an Hour, The Lady with the Dog, and The Necklace were written.

In The Story of an Hour, we see a woman react quite strangely to the news that her husband has died in a train crash. As the narrator tells us, "She did not hear the story as many women would have heard the same" (Chopin 2004). The woman feels freed by the event because of being forced to live under the control of her husband in an era where such a relationship was the norm for married women. Upon hearing the news she sits and appreciates the trees "all aquiver with the new spring life" (

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Category: History - W