The Right to Be Happy

Essay 4: Biographical Interpretation

The Right to be Happy

Normally, when hearing that your significant other has just been killed, it would render someone incapacitated with grief; Louise Mallard quickly shows that she is happy to be a widow. When reading a story so devoid of details, it makes it hard to come to a reasonable conclusion or explanation as to why Louise Mallard is overcome with joy; her husband, Brently Mallard, has just been killed in an accident and she acts like she's been released from prison. Ironically, Kate Chopin's life experiences are similar to her writing and only by looking into her family history can you understand why her character is happy about the sudden death of her husband.

Kate Chopin may have been born into a typical 18th century household, but she did not have the experience of a typical 18th century child. In 1851, Chopin was born to Thomas O'Flaherty, a prosperous Irish immigrant who had a successful boat and supply store, and Eliza O'Flaherty, who at 16 was arranged to marry Thomas who was 39. Besides Kate and her three siblings, her father also supported Eliza's mother and four of her unmarried sisters, as well as a handful of slaves. At the very young age of 5, her father sent Chopin to an all-girls boarding school. According to Emily Toth, who wrote several biographies of Chopin, "She had her own agenda, and she wanted to know everything. Where, for instance, did her father go every day?"(Toth, 8) She was described to be a very demanding child, which would explain why she was sent to the boarding school at the age of 5.

Kate Chopin's life would be forever changed into her first year at the boarding school. Not long after she started at the school, and just like Brently Mallard from "The Story of an Hour", Thomas O'Flaherty died in a train accident, making her mother a widow and forcing her to support everyone in the O'Flaherty household; her mother successfully ran her late husbands business without ever remarrying, showing Kate that she didn't need a husband to provide for her or her family. From then on out, independent women would heavily influence her life and later on her writing. Her mother removed her from the boarding school, and since the death of her father, Kate had no other male influences in her upbringing. Back at home her great-grandmother, a widow herself, "oversaw her education and taught her French, music, and the gossip on St. Louis women of the past", according to biographer Neal Wyatt. ("Kate Chopin Biography")

The only other man who was influential in Chopin's life was her husband, Oscar Chopin. The two married in 1870 and together had seven children. Oscar was the son of wealthy parents, but was not a successful businessman himself. But like the every important woman in her life, Kate is widowed when Oscar died in 1882. When he died, he left Kate with an unsuccessful business and debt. Kate ran her husbands business until she sold them