Along with the passage of time, the general perspective on gender roles has gradually changed ever since feminism emerged and settled down in society. In the nineteenth century, marriage has further solidified and constrained the gender roles within the household. Under this selected creation of social community – marriage – Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour and Zora Neale Hurston’s Monkey Junk: A Satire on Modern Divorce both convey the tenacious stereotype of women’s particular role in household but implicitly criticize it throughout the plot, using different ways of narration.
Similarly, Chopin and Hurston are female American writers who instilled the social pressure of gender roles and gender stereotypes in their works. Though The Story of an Hour and Monkey Junk were published in two different periods — The Story of an Hour in 1894 (Chopin 61) and “Monkey Junk” in 1927 (Hurston at the end of Monkey Junk)—both writers endeavor to convey feminism in literature within their communities – Chopin in the white community of Louisiana (The Kate Chopin International Society) and Hurston in the African American community of Harlem (The Newly Complicated Zora Neale Hurston 3).
These two short stories are the pieces of proof that shows their implication of feminism, deep inside the theme of each story. Both works imply the gender stereotype that women should be obedient to men within marriage but break it in different ways. In The Story of an Hour, Louise herself has lived obediently to her husband in his presence just as a “typical wife” of that period, and Louise’s sister, Josephine, and Mr. Mallard’s friend, Richards, are worried about Louise’s broken heart for the loss of her husband. These all show the implication of the stated gender stereotype. In breaking this gender stereotype, Louise can be considered passive in directly challenging women’s confined role under marriage. From the following statement, “but she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome (Chopin 60, 61)” and “there would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature (Chopin 61)”, we could assume that Louise does desire for speaking out with her own voice and living for herself but has not directly gone against her husband’s assertion in his presence. Only upon her husband’s assumed death, she acquires the freedom that has been bound to her husband under marriage: Louise’s repetitive exclamation of the word, “free”, shows her pleasure on acquiring the unexpected freedom that she has desired for so long; “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! (Chopin 61)”.
On the other hand, in Monkey Junk, the man expects his wife to be obedient and so when he finds out that she has cheated on him, he argues with her and eventually brings her to the court for her guilt of neglecting her job as a typical wife and meeting other men behind him. These expectation and action he has taken clearly implies the gender stereotype on women. Unlike Louise, the woman in Monkey Junk breaks this gender stereotype in an active way by directly challenging the woman’s typical role – obeying her husband and following his words – under marriage; she explicitly and strongly tells him what she wants from him and even tells him what he should do for her. Her strong tone of asserting that he needs to provide checkbooks that she wants and should not break their marital relationship for her own good even seems impudent: “but she answered him laughingly saying, “Speak not out of turn. Thou wast made to sign checks, not to make love signs. Go now, and broil thyself an radish” (Hurston Verse 17)”; “but she answered him, “Nay, thou art not through with me – for I am a darned sweet woman and thou knowest it. Don’t let that lie get out. Thou shalt never be through with me as long as thou hath bucks” (Hurston Verse 24)”.
These two different actions taken on gender stereotype within marriage are deeply related with social context in each period. In the nineteenth century, the women’s rights for their voices were strictly limited; “in the patriarchal world of the nineteenth-century United States that Chopin depicts, a woman was not expected to engage in self-assertion. As Norma Basch observes of the American legal and economic milieu of the period, the patriarchy of that time “mandated the complete dependence of wives on husbands,” making marriage “a form of slavery” (Jamil 216)”. So this strong social pressure explains why Louise has been more likely to be passive in speaking out her pursuit of freedom in her husband’s presence and why she has not revealed her pleasure of acquiring this freedom to Josephine and Richards.
As time flew from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, social conditions for women had certainly improved: “here we learn that in Victorian America, women of all classes were devoid of agency and voice; but the stage also shows that from the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 to the end of the 1920s, women slowly found their voice, and that men reluctantly lowered theirs. (Levitt 140)”; in 1920, the Constitution of the United States claimed the nineteenth Amendment which said to provide the equal voting rights to citizens regardless of sex (Scholastic). This evidence of social changes in the early twentieth century indicates the women’s empowerment in society and evinces how this better condition for women could make it easier for the woman in Monkey Junk to be more active in breaking the gender stereotype.
Furthermore, The Story of an Hour and Monkey Junk have different superior positions of gender within their households. The Story of an Hour typically shows the fixed gender role under marriage. Mr. Mallard is superior in making assertion than Louise; the following statement implicitly shows that Mr. Mallard has always been the one to make a decision for her: “there would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature (Chopin 61)”
In Monkey Junk, on the other hand, Hurston implies a man’s arrogance on his belief that he is superior than the woman and puts the woman in a superior position over all the men within the household and the court. Several times throughout the story, the man is described to “know all the law and the profits and even the females (Hurston 1, 3, 25)” and unlike his claim on all of these, the woman has made him eventually end up with the guilt that he has never done. For the sake of luring the man into marriage and all other men in the court into standing up for her innocence, the woman takes advantage of the femininity of her physical appearance and actions: “then became she coy and sweet with flattery and he swalloweth the bait (Hurston Verse 7)”; “and she gladdened the eyes of the jury and the judge leaned down from his high seat and beamed upon her for verily she was some brown. And she turned soulful eyes about her and all men yearned to fight for her (Hurston Verse 43, 44)”. Her exploitation on men evinces her hidden superiority over them.
Another similarity shared between these two works is that husbands in both stories love their wives and treat them fairly well. However, Louise and the woman have different pursuit in their lives, stronger than their love in marriage – her own freedom for Louise and wealth for the woman. In The Story of an Hour, though she desires for her own independence and freedom, it was not that Louise has not loved Mr. Mallard: “she knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead (Chopin 61)”; this shows that Mr. Mallard has treated Louise with kindness and Louise has loved him, too. But, as it is stated that “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 (Chopin 61)”, Louise considers “the possession of self-assertion” as a more joyful and important motif for her to live rather than love with her husband.
Just as Mr. Mallard has loved and treated Louise well, the man in Monkey Junk has also praised and treated the woman fairly well: “then did he make a joyful noise saying, “Behold, I have chosen a wife, yea verily a maiden I have exalted above all others, for see I have wed her (Hurston Verse 9)”; “and for an year did he wooed her with his shekels and comfort her with his checkbook and she endured him (Hurston Verse 11)””. However, unlike Louise, the woman has not loved him but only desired wealth of the man’s checkbooks even from the very beginning of her encounter with him: “and in that same year a maiden gazeth upon his checkbook and she coveted it (Hurston Verse 6)”. When she says “thou wast made to sign checks, not to make love signs (Hurston Verse 17)”, it becomes clearer that all she has wanted from him is wealth.
The steadfast movement of feminism in various fields has clearly acted as a decisive factor of changing the imbedded gender stereotypes that have deprived women of more opportunities to speak out with their own voice in society. Both Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour and Zora Neale Hurston’s Monkey Junk: A Satire on Modern Divorce are the works that contributed to spreading feminism through literature. Though their backgrounds, working periods as a writer, the ways of narrating stories are very different from each other, they both have criticized the gender stereotype in society, shared the same theme of feminism and endeavored to spread it through their works in order to make a better world for women.