Kate Chopin and Joyce Carol Oates

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how both Kate Chopin and Joyce Carol Oates can best be characterized as feminist authors of their respective centuries who show how apparently positive female social roles actually limit women. The paper first looks at how Kate Chopin was famous for chronicling the frustrations and limitations of the role of married women during the 19th century with such novels as "The Awakening" and "The Story of an Hour." In comparison, the paper then examines how Joyce Carol Oates also delves into the role of modern women in her fiction writing.

From the Paper:

"The wildly prolific Joyce Carol Oates also delves into the role of modern women in her fiction writing, although a quick review of her works spanning the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, suggests it is more difficult to draw as direct a connection between Oates' major works and biography than it is with Chopin. However, like Mrs. Mallard of "The Story of an Hour" briefly delights in a fantasy coming to life, only to find her hopes dashed when the promise of freedom is taken away, the heroine Connie of "Where are you going, where have you been," finds her fantasy of being seductive and more beautiful than her conventional mother and sister to be far different than she realizes in reality. In Oates, much more explicitly than in Chopin, the trap of femininity 'used' as a vehicle of liberation for the teenage Connie becomes a lie, as Connie becomes the victim of rape and possibly (it is implied) even murder. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." PBS Electronic Library. 6 Oct 2008. http://www.pbs.org/katechopin/library/storyofanhour.html
• Johnson, Greg. "A Brief Biography: Joyce Carol Oates." From A Reader's Guide to the Recent Novels of Joyce Carol Oates. 1996. 6 Oct 2008.http://jco.usfca.edu/life/index.html
• "Kate Chopin: Biography." The Kate Chopin International Society. 6 Oct 2008. http://www.katechopin.org/biography.shtml
• Oates, Joyce. "Where are you going, where have you been?" http://jco.usfca.edu/works/wgoing/text.html

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