In Kate Chopin's short
story, Louise Mallard is described as "young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke
repression and even a certain strength." She has, evidently, experienced repression as part
of her Victorian-era marriage, one in which she has few legal rights because her husband is
entitled to act on her behalf, to make decisions for her, and so on. Brently Mallard has always
been a good and loving husband; even Louise reflects and knows that "she would weep again
when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked saved with
love upon her [...]."
Brently is not the problem here; the institution
of marriage seems to be the problem. That is what Louise
takes issue with, not the man himself. He seems always to have loved her and to have acted as
husbands were supposed to act at the time. However, even Louise's (uneven) love for him cannot
hold a candle to "this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the
strongest impulse...
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