A Marxist-Feminist Critique of Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour and John Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums

By: M. S. Zarei



Introduction


To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man.
Simon de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)

The historical usage of the word gender is rather as old as the feminists’ attempts to define women as having a gender identity in a patriarchal culture and society. As noted by Glover and Kaplan in Genders, the sixth edition of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language refers the word gender “either to the grammatical practice of classifying nouns as masculine, feminine, or neuter; or it could mean ‘a sex’” (x).

Gender Criticism, however, as a modern approach to literature, explores how ideas about men and women, masculinity and femininity, are socially constructed in a patriarchal culture. Likewise, feminist critics tend to insist on the notion of gender as a cultural and/or social construct that is quite different from sex as a biologically determined factor. Accordingly, most critics believe that feminist criticism is by definition gender criticism, thus cutting off the word ‘sexuality’ from its old and conventional associations. As Arnold Davidson states. "Sexual identity is no longer exclusively linked to the anatomical structure of the internal and external genital organs. It is now a matter of impulses, tastes, aptitudes, satisfactions, and the psychic traits" (qtd. in Genders xvi).

Therefore, when Simon de Beauvoir declared in her Second Sex in 1949 that, “one is not born a woman, one become one,” she was hinting at the way in which individuals of the female sex assume the feminine gender, that is, that elaborate set of restrictive, socially prescribed attitudes and behaviors we associate with femininity. Thus as the Freudian theory makes it clear, gender is not a unique property of bodies originally existent in human beings; it is “an outcome” not “an origin.”

Feminist criticism (used synonymously with Gender criticism) passed through different controversial factors and obstacles in its course of development. Rigidly periodized in three different phases or waves (to use Showalter’s categorization), the feminist criticism in its first wave mainly deals with the Woman’s right and Woman’s suffrage. The leading figure in this phase is Virginia Woolf whose ‘A Room of Ones Own’ contributed immensely to this wave apart from Simone de Beauvoir’s fundamental role which mostly appeared in her ceaseless cry to define women in her ‘Second Sex.’ Although the second wave of feminism continues to share the first wave’s fight for women’s rights, its focal emphasis shift to the politics of reproduction, to women’s ‘experience’, and to sexual ‘differences.’ In this wave, sexuality, as both a means of oppression and something to celebrate, becomes a key issue (The main principles of this wave will be later discussed in the two short stories assigned). The third wave of feminism, which started from 1970 up to this time, however, rejects the main principles of the first and second wave as giving minor roles to women. Borrowing the psychological ideas of Jacque Lacan and Julia Kristeva, this wave of feminism strives for creating a female framework and a female discourse based on the female experience and not according to male definitions, a process called gynocriticism by Elaine Showalter. Therefore, as Showalter argues, gynocritics try to “construct a female framework for the analysis of women’s literature, to develop new models based on the study of female experience, rather than to adapt to the male models and theories” (qtd. in Bressler 177). Finally, of the four models offered by gynocriticism for addressing the nature of women’s writing, Helen Cixous in her challenging works such as “Laugh of the Medusa” (1975) discusses “a particular kind of female writing that she calls l´écriture féminine, envisioned in terms of bisexuality” (Bressler 180).

The aim of this literary study is to explore the fight for women’s right as well as the women’s confinement in society and social institutions in Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour and John Steinbeck’s Chrysanthemums. These stories will be further discussed in the light of feminist criticism (gender role and identity) and certain features of second wave of feminism (Marxist feminism, in particular), that ultimately reveal the sexual differences and the social isolation of women in a patriarchal culture.

Feminine Self in “The Story of an Hour”

Critical readings of Kate Chopin’s works often note the tension between female characters and the so-called patriarchal society that surrounds them. Likewise, Chopin’s The Story of an Hour sketches the social restraints and tribulations a marriage can bring as a social institution. A relentless fight for freedom from the patriarchal dominance, as characterized by the second wave of feminism, is constantly emphasized throughout the work in order to abolish the ‘sexual’ differences existing between men and women.

Generally, women weren’t liberated during the 19th century and the female liberation wasn’t put on the agenda until the 1960’s. In case of Louise, Kate Chopin tries to depict at best how this female liberation is temporarily achieved, namely in an hour of utmost joy and exhilaration. It seems that Chopin in this story is mainly concerned with exploring the dynamic interrelation between women and men (Louise and Brenty), women and patriarchy (Louise and society), and even women and women (Louise and her sister). However, most critics focus on the importance of conflict in this work and the way in which Chopin uses gender constraints on two levels: to open an avenue for the discussion of feminine identity and, at the same time, to critique the patriarchal society that denies that identity. Accordingly, Peggy Skaggs suggests that “entrapment, not freedom, is the source of Chopin’s inspiration, for she is primarily concerned with exploring the way in which gender roles deny identity”; she continues: “yet without the entrapment, the question of identity, even the inspiration to write about identity, wouldn’t exist” (18). Thus the notion of social “entrapment” and that of “cageling self” are tragically dramatized early in the story, making freedom of a fluttering self seem aptly predictable throughout the story, even if it is to be reduced to a tragic death, that is, the freedom of one’s soul, "[...] 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…“Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering" (Chopin 2).

Worth noting is also Kate Chopin’s acute style of representation of Louise entrapment in a patriarchal society. Having employed the free indirect discourse (the FID hypothesis) in rendering Louise speech and thoughts, the narrator has been able to move inside the character’s mind and thereby revealing her thoughts and her true feeling about institution of marriage as a confining force imposed by a patriarchal culture:

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.
(Chopin2)
Accordingly, most feminist critics believe that marriage is but a ‘legal prostitution’ that ultimately consolidates the difference between genders in society.

As feminist criticism in its second wave underwent a marked shift of perspective to view women in the light of the politics of reproduction (gender), a different version of feminism called ‘Marxist Feminism’ emerged in the period, which can partly be traced in Chopin’s stories. Marxist feminism tended to see women “as constituting a seriously underprivileged class” (103). Adopting many Marxist concepts redefined by Louis Althusser, Marxist feminism explores ideology as an ‘inescapable’ factor that “gives us what we experience as our individuality” (Bertens 103). Likewise, marriage institution can be almost taken as an ‘Ideological State Apparatus’ that interpellates women as subservient to men, hence denying their true identities and revealing their social differences consolidated in the act of marriage. Louise Mallard in Chopin’s story once tries to escape form the mythical role of Woman as subservient to men when she learns about her husband death, however, she fails to revel fully in one-hour freedom bestowed upon her as her husband reappears alive at the end, leading to a tragic erasure of her feminine self at the end:

There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a
goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the
stairs…. Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard
who entered….When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease-- of joy
that kills.

The Chrysanthemums; The Fenced Femininity

John Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums depicts the trials of a woman, Elisa Allen, attempting to gain power in a man's world. She tries to define the boundaries of her role as a woman in such a closed society. While her environment is portrayed as a tool for social repression, it is through nature in her garden where Elisa gains and shows off her power. As like Chopin’s story, here Elisa Allen is trying her ‘fenced freedom’ momentarily. She constantly fights for an equal right with men, hence trying at best to imitate men’s mannerism in her gardening activity and personal contacts with the masculine world:

Her figure looked blocked and heavy in her gardening costume, a man's black hat pulled
low down over her eyes, clod-hopper shoes, a figured print dress almost completely
covered by a big corduroy apron with four big pockets to hold the snips, the trowel and
scratcher, the seeds and the knife she worked with. She wore heavy leather gloves to
protect her hands while she worked.
(The Chrysanthemums 2)

She even withholds to betray her feminine features to her masculine environment, lest it should deny her the limited power she possesses in the masculine world. Unconsciously, as she looks through her fence at the men talking business, she is trying to cover up her feminine qualities: “She brushed a cloud of hair out of her eyes with the back of her glove, and left a smudge of earth on her cheek in doing it”(1). She longs to be in their position and to possess their characteristics.

However, as the story progresses, Elisa has trouble extending this power outside of the fence that surrounds her garden. Elisa learns but does not readily accept, that she possesses a feminine power weak for the time, not the masculine one she had tried so hard to achieve through its imitation. Again like Louise in Chopin’s story, Elisa here is fenced in from the real world, as her fenced garden of chrysanthemums may clearly show. She is cut off from the rest of the world as the opening sentence of the story suggests: “The high gray-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world” (1).

The main principles of Marxist feminism can also be easily explored in this short story. The politics of production, emphasized by the second wave of feminism, redefines Elisa Allen as a product of the patriarchal society whereby she is constantly hailed in the masculine world as a strong gardener. Her misrecognition (what some Marxists dub as a ‘false consciousness’) finally leads her to a sexual frustration and repression mostly shown when she encounters the peddler who indirectly prods her to reveal some of her feminine qualities. The only outlet she discovers for her frustration is in a flower garden where she cultivates beautiful chrysanthemums which are both a symbol for her feminine features and her attempts to enter the masculine world. Elisa seems to be a victim of a ‘false ideology’ imposed upon her by a patriarchal culture. She has long lost her ‘gender role and identity’ in her futile quest for the masculine power. She tries to fill her fragmented personality with a portion of ideology that constantly hails her to gardening (what she revels in for most): “Her face was eager and mature and handsome; even her work with the scissors was over-eager, over-powerful. The chrysanthemum stems seemed too small and easy for her energy.”

Finally, ‘The Chrysanthemum’ as like the Chopin’s ‘The Story of an Hour’ tries to portray the women as totally isolated in a patriarchal culture that deems them as ‘Others’ while ironically hails them as an accepted party, however subdued, in the social community. The two authors, here dexterously weave a great deal of social commentary and feminist ideas through their works which may only be perceived if we consider the prevalent stereotypes and social expectations of women at their time, and the implications of such ideas.



Sources:

Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics. London: Routledge, 2001.

Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. 4th ed. New Jersey: Pearson, 2007.

Chopin, Kate. The Story of an Hour. Great Literature Online. 1997-2007
(2 July, 2007). <http://chopin.recentauthors.net./thestoryofanhour/.>

Glover, David, and Cora Kaplan. Genders. London: Routledge, 2000.

Skaggs, Peggy. Kate Chopin. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985.

Steinbeck, John. The Chrysanthemums. Great Literature Online. 1997-2007
(2 July, 2007). <http://steinbeck.recentauthors.net./thechrysanthemums/.>