Contemporary marriages
Louise Mallard, as imagined by Kate Chopin in The Story of an Hour, remains to this day a metaphor for the desperate American housewife because the root cause of this desperation remains unsolved as when seen through the application of Adlerian perspectives (Blanton 414). Chopin tells of the tragic story surrounding the death of a woman whose unloved husband is among those missing following a railway accident, as her death springs from the sadness at finding out that her husband was not among those who died (Chopin ¶2). In the telling of the story, one can find strains of Chopin’s portrayal of the conflicts that tear apart relationships in contemporary marriages through the application of unrealistic expectations of happiness.
One needs only to look at pop culture to see that nothing much has changed in intervening years. Despite the closing of the economic gap between men and women, social pundits have noted that over the past few decades, divorce rates have continued to rise such that as of 2001, for every two marriages there is one divorce filed (Krieder ¶7). The rates are higher for subsequent marriages. It is of common knowledge that a woman who chooses to have a successful career will never achieve as much success as her male counterparts if she does decide to have a family while pursuing a satisfying career (Krieder ¶7). There thus remains the relationship crisis that plagued the Mallards in 1894 in contemporary marriages.
Today, although these societal taboos against the recognition of a bad or failed marriage have since disappeared, as can be seen from the social acceptance of divorce, the pressures at work that destroy families in the first place have remained unabated. These pressures exist today because most of the work in feminism is geared toward the elimination of any economic distinction between men and women both as to earning capacity and influence in the workplace. This recognizes that in marriages of that day, the most important concern for women was economic security. For Betty Friedan, this view was none more true, as she claimed that the obsolete sex roles and the elimination of gender differences and bias, would occur once the politicization of the women’s movement reaches a critical point. (Friedan 2)
Now that most of these gender barriers are eliminated, there is a change in emphasis from security to self-esteem, and this lies at the core of the Adlerian approach to marriage. Blanton’s work identifies these pressures that adversely affect marriage in three contrasting dimensions, to wit: equality versus hierarchy; cooperation versus competition; and commitment versus evasion. (Blanton 414) In each of these dimension-pairs, the latter dimension offers a perspective that is harmful and destructive to marriage, and each of these negative dimensions are present in Chopin’s story.
The hierarchy that destroyed the relationship can be seen in the way that Louise’s voice is sublimated throughout the relationship, only to find a voice in the very end, and when it does come out, it comes as timid and fearful of happiness (Chopin ¶3). Louise’s voice is also sublimated by those who surround her, who expect her to be a loving and adoring wife to a dedicated husband. Chopin writes: “Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for admission. ‘Louise, open the door! I beg, open the door–you will make yourself ill. What are you doing Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door.’” (Chopin, ¶17). This implies an imposed desire to keep an unhappy marriage together for extraneous reasons, whatever they may be. A number of popular television shows have focused precisely on the desperation that stems from the failure of cooperation in contemporary marriage (Blanton, 414), the most damning being the high and worldwide popularity of Desperate Housewives, a show whose primary source of conflict is the unhappiness and dissatisfaction that exists within contemporary marriage.
There is competition in the Mallards’s marriage, but the competition is so one-sided that when Louise’s voice, timid as it sees the light, it is cold and callous. “Free! Body and soul, free!” she repeatedly whispers to herself while being racked with tears of joy (Chopin ¶13). This is hardly the reaction of one who has lost someone so dear, but a cry of victory against a oppressive tyrant whose rule is at an end. In point, Louise’s elation at the prospect of freedom tells volumes about the situation in her marriage. Louise Mallard feels trapped in a marriage that has since lost is spark, and this is clear from the very start as Chopin writes, “[k]nowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble.” (Chopin, ¶1) From this one sentence, we can infer that in her marriage, hers is a voice that is rarely heard and that she has been dominated for so long, a far cry from the cultural ideal where marriage is supposed to be a partnership among equals. “And yet she had loved him–sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!”
Finally, there is evasion in the relationship when Louise avoids the uncomfortable truth that her relationship is inconsistent with the persistent notion in popular culture that a marriage is composed of a “till-death-do-us-part” fantasy that is fueled primarily by dreams and unrealistic expectations of happily ever after (Blanton 414). Chopin makes Louise keep all these feelings within, withholding them even from her immediate family, in this case, her sister. Chopin also uses the metaphor of the house to illustrate the lie that Louise Mallard has had to live. That Louise decides to whisper her emotions and keep them to herself may be more a function of societal pressure at the time to maintain a “stable” and “happy” marriage, even if through false pretense. These societal norms were so pervasive that even her sister mistook her actions – that of weeping and sobbing in her arms, as well as retreating to the privacy of her bedroom – as signs of grief, when they were acts of sheer joy (Chopin ¶17). This evasion of the real issues that surround a marriage or relationship leads to an avoidance of the question of commitment. That Chopin equates marriage with “a joy that kills” (Chopin ¶21) and “a heart malady” (Chopin ¶1) is to see that Chopin saw death in marriage as an escape from the hierarchy and the competition that eats up souls.
The only difference between the two milieus, if any is to be observed, is the rise in economic power of woman such that divorce is now a weapon that an offended party in a marriage may use at whim once the fairy tale of courtship ends and the long, hard work that is marriage begins. Where in Louise Mallard’s milieu all that she could hope for is the untimely death of her husband, contemporary marriage allows for early exits such as divorce, and otherwise happily married couple have been heading to lawyers in preparations for divorce. As such, the divorce rate in the United States is consistently increasing and is at the moment at an all-time high, with no signs of letup. The success of Postsecret, especially as to the number of entries that relate to unsuccessful relationships, is testament to the large numbers of people who feel similarly trapped within loveless marriages (PostSecret).
In sum, there is no significant change the plight of women over the past few decades. Although the needs satisfied by marriage changing with the financial and economic pressures no longer as burdensome as in previous times, the real roots of the problem – as expressed by Barton through an Adlerian perspective– are not properly addressed. This must be rectified if true, meaningful, and lasting relationships are to be created through marriage.
Works Cited
Blanton, Prisclla White. “The Adlerian Perspective in the Context of Contemporary Marriages.” The Journal of Individual Psychology 56:4(2000): 414.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” “The Story of an Hour”. undated. Virginia Commonwealth University. 1 Mar 2007 ;http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/hour/;.
Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. 6th ed. New York: W. W. Norton ; Company, 2001.
Krieder, R. M.. “Number, Timing, and Duration of Marriages and Divorces.” Current Population Reports (2001) 70-97. 01 Mar 2007 Washington D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau ;http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/marr-div.html;.
Warren, Frank. “PostSecret.” PostSecret. 25 Feb 2007. PostSecret. 1 Mar 2007 ;http://www.postsecret.com;.