Disscussion Questions Set #1

1)

Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" is not your typical romance story. It might almost be argued that it is "unromantic" because as the story goes on the reader finds that the supposed widowed women, Mrs. Mallard, does not romantically love her husband as she seems to do in the begin. When she hears news of her husband's death "she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment...When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone" (3). The reader would think that this is a typical reaction to the death of a beloved spouse, but the reader suspects something when the tone of the story change, in paragraph four, from an image gloomy death changes to the freshness of being, "[Mrs. Mallard] could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were aquivered with the new spring of life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air". Spring is a strange junkstaposition with the death of someone's lover. If Mrs. Mallard ever loved her husband with the stereotypical love we think of today it was short lived.

Mr. and Mrs. Mallard do not have the typical love the way most modern American marriage might be thought of today. Now that Mr. Mallard is dead she feels a new sense of "possession and self-assertion" and feels that here body and soul are now free. The love that she had for her husband was her display of submission and obedience to him, which was expected at the time (but are probably not as far removed from our society as we think). The Mallards lived in time were romantic love was secondary to martial roles seen by society. This is why she died at the end of the story when she finds that her husband is still alive. It is her only way achieve the sense of freedom and independence she felt when she thought Mr. Mallard was dead.

5)

I read "To His Coy Mistress" by Marvell in my senior year of high school and thought it was peculiar, and now after rereading my mind has not changed. If I were a woman and some strange man gave me this poem that said "Two hundred years to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest"(15-16) I think I would stay as far away as humanly possible. No wonder the poor woman was so coy. It seems as if women was not Marvell strongest department. De Vries found "To His Coy Mistress" to be strange just like me. De Vries wrote "To His Importunate Mistress" as a satirical response to Marvell's poem.

It might be possible that De Vries read "To his Coy Mistress" in school, just like me, and decided it was creepy. He might have written his poem to poke some fun at it because he also was amazed someone from the seventeen century could be so perverted. The reader clearly knows he is making fun of the classic because the title match ("To his Coy Mistress" and "To His Importunate Mistress"), some of the lines are similar [ "But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot, striking fear"(3-4)], and both poems are written in rhyming couplets. Marvell and De Vries obviously have an obsession with women, but De Vries is essentially saying that Marvell is wrong and love is not all it's cracked up to be. The poem goes on about how all a women do is drain your bank account and how you have to work two jobs to pleasure yourself. De Vries would hate to live in deserts of vast eternity earning money so he can stare at breast, like what Marvell wants to do. I thought Devries was funny and did a good job playing off Marvell's poem and now cannot imagine reading one without the other.