Short stories require writers to skillfully express a character’s true motivations in a restricted narrative. Kate Chopin’s 1894 story “The Story of an Hour” and Samantha Schweblin’s 2021 story “The Third Marvid” encourage readers to explore the inner lives of two very different female protagonists who share a deep desire for autonomy and self-determination. Chopin and Schweblin masterfully depict Mrs. Mallard in “The Story of an Hour” and the unnamed narrator of “The Third Marvid,” revealing the complex relationship between individual desire and external constraints. Mrs. Mallard is physically and emotionally fragile from the start of “The Story of an Hour,” by Chopin. As she was “afflicted with a heart trouble” (Chopin 1), “great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death” (Chopin 1). Mrs. Mallard is first portrayed as fragile and ethereal, requiring extreme care and attention. As the story progresses, Chopin reveals Mrs. Mallard’s real nature.
When the voice echoes the devastating response, it is after Mrs. Mallard has concluded her cleaning, and Chopin reveals her heroine’s main intention. Contrary to anguish and despair, uplifting and ecstasy is what Mrs. Mallard feels in which she is able to dismiss a dubious idea as nothingness – “a great and freeing vision enabled her to scorn this suggestion as feeble” (Chopin 1). Chopin then years Mrs. Mallard’s epiphany as an “open and raised perception,” giving this instance a feel for transcending and removing the veil that had bogged down her real desires. Her motivation was basically the need to regain what she had for so long wanted to be free from her marriage and culture that pushed her towards her fate. According to the sentence, “There will be no powerful will bending her into paying ultimate homage to man’s will in his blind persistence with which men force women to believe,” that man has a right to impose his own private will on a fellow being in the same way, Mrs. Mallard came to know that the appearance of her husband dying gave her a relatively beautiful chance to live freely, relieved of every pressure and expectation by others.
Chopin’s symbolism and imagery give Mrs. Mallard some extra dimensions. Reading a book, she feels “the tops of trees, aquiver with the new spring life,” “the delicious breath of rain,” and “patches of blue sky” (Chopin 1) as a symbol of her renewal and rebirth. This precise portrayal immerses the reader into Mrs. Mallard’s emotional world, therefore enabling her to understand her struggle for self-determination and the exhilarating prospects a great feeling of independence symbolizes. Like Van Allsburg’s “Two Bad Ants,” but in an entirely different setting, Samantha Schweblin’s “The Third Marvid” evokes this wish for a standalone entity and self-determination of the creature. In this ugly story, the main character with no name lives in a world where “mutations,” which means giving people a weird look after some operations as a punishment, are common. The first two mutations are necessary, but the protagonist challenges society with spinal cord cutting, which is the last one to save her authenticity and her physical freedom.
In the introduction of the chapter, Schweblin shows the conveyor belt’s muffle to weakness by demonstrating the narrator’s walls in the contradiction between collaboration and independence. “I don’t want to transform anymore,” “I want to stay like that, she says about her body-changing experience. This statement polemically reveals her inner willingness and the resilient voiced purpose to resist prevailing cultural standards that may be enough to undermine her personality. Schweblin makes use of the imagery as a dreadful way to highlight the narrator’s precarious state and the magnitude of the choices she has to make. The Narrator confides, “and I freak out because I imagine that I’m not going to mutate, and it feels as if I’m standing on the edge of the cliff staring into an abyss” (Schweblin), explaining the fear and the unknown of the counteractive ness of the social norm. Despite her fear, the narrator’s hushing bravery to stick to her guns in the face of extremely high pressure to go along with the crowd guides her and keeps her sanity in the increasingly grim world.
Subtly, Schweblin makes the narrator’s problems not only psychological but also emotional as well, a fact the reader realizes as he continues reading. As she remembers her earlier mutations, the narrator feels loss and disconnection: “That person I was pre-first mutation is so faintly now fine-memorised by me” (Schweblin). Thus, evident in this emotional statement, she is making a big decision that has huge stakes. She actually needs to maintain her individuality. This is not her fight against society but rather just a futile effort to be on the other side of the system. When reading She-who-must-be-obeyed, we find that Schweblin’s portrayal of class members and relatives is a clear manifestation of her severe one-woman war.
Nevertheless, the narrator’s husband stays with her at the start and asks her to support the ultimate modification. Still, gradually, when the people started talking behind their backs, he suggested to her that she be reasonable. This emotional stabbing in the back with the criticism of friends and the people around causes them to feel righteous anger, making the narrator much more persistent about her path, preserving her self-esteem.
Chopin and Schweblin, in the short stories “The Story of an Hour” and “The Third Marvid,” display a fair chance at the complexity of the human soul as it is enveloped and defined by the determinant factors of individual ambition and societal constraints, such as empathy or exhaustion. Chopin’s Mrs. Mallard tries to maintain the 1890 American gender norms, which have become part of her routine, while Schweblin’s Bodey comes to terms with the lifestyle of a very different future, where autonomy is eradicated as a natural body feature. While the goal of flying in both cases is the same, separate freedom, the protagonists of both pieces have the same deep desire for their independent lives. By means of their individual characterization and concise writing, they clearly show the inner factors that determine our impulses, thus making us realize the yearning for independence, which is due to the multiple efforts to carve ourselves out of other people’s shadows and make ourselves stand out. In “Story of an Hour,” Chopin applies symbolism, imagery, and the sensitive portrayal of Mrs. Mallard’s emotional state in her exploration of the women protagonist’s freedom and the possibility of her husband’s death.
While reading “The Third Marvid” by Schweblin, I am struck by her depiction of the sufferings of the narrator’s psychological conflicts and interpersonal connection. Thus, I understand the great price she pays when she does not comply. Throughout these texts, writers help us unravel the nature of the multitude of possible triggers that create our impulses and the need of every man to discover who they are and build a road fit despite the many social restraints. The divergent cases of the protagonists and the author’s perception of individual independence, thus being considered worthwhile, make it a fact to study further. For a moment, Mrs. Mallard breathes with freedom, but then she unexpectedly catches a glimpse of her husband coming in from the door. Freedom is almost snatched from her grasp. Thus, Chopin concluded his story with an unexpected line, namely, “they compared her death to a disease of the heart, the joy that makes you die” (Chopin 2), leaving us readers with the challenge of processing this surprising sudden change in the narrative.
Does Mrs. Mallard’s tragedy criminalize her self-determination and suggest that one should be wary of forsaking one’s social role? Would her tiny blossoming of life be the victory of individual self-sacrifice over the burden of oppression of men? Chopin allows them to be subjected to readers’ thought processes, the reason being that they, readers, consider it extremely difficult to attain autonomy on their own. Neither do we know what the resolution is but what we know is that the stubborn narrator will definitely return. She would continue to be a very strong candidate for the last mutation if she did not get pushed by the social pressure to endure the last mutation for her preservation and forget herself for conformity. Will she argue and remain a recluse on the borders of the society where individuals are supposed to obey norms? Schweblin’s incomprehensible finale and thorough investigation of the narrator’s thoughts raise questions in the minds of the readers about the mental and emotional effect of self-reflection on an isolationist society. Chopin and Schwabl together have a powerfully detailed method and an exploration of deep humanities qualities that are still in demand after the death of the artists and over the periods, generations, and cultures. “The Story of an Hour” and “The Third Marvid” direct their audience to explore an intimate world of the characters, engage with the inconsistencies of the autonomy notion, and speculate (wonder) the old query of whether it is in our nature or the structure of our societies to sacrifice one’s wishes for the sake of others.
Finally, these intriguing stories highlight the complicated factors that determine the motives and actions of people and urge us to ponder on the boundaries between personal freedom and social restriction. These elements are about us, who desperately search the inside of the person to find the way to be different as the bulk of society requires to exchange their uniqueness for unification, and about those who look all around waiting for other opportunities.
Work Cited
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” 1894.
Schweblin, Samantha. “The Third Marvid.” The Paris Review, 2021, https://www.theparisreview.org/fiction/7757/the-third-marvid-samantha-schweblin
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