Q: Excerpt from The Story Of An Hour: “She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength.”

C: I chose this sentence because it is the turning point in the story. Initially, readers meet a depressed Mrs. Mallard who has just been informed of her husband’s death. Although readers assume this news will kill the already depressed woman, the story portrays her as joyful. From a feminist perspective, it can be said that the woman was likely depressed due to the constraints of her marriage. Mallard is objectified in the story through language such as “young” and “fair.” That objectification turns her into a vessel for imagery of an independent, young, thriving woman vs. a woman who is married and no longer eligible. The story seems to be created as a warning to women that men will control them and their lives. However, in doing so, the story reinforces the stereotype that all married women are bored housewives and all single women are free only because they do not have a husband. 

Q: Is it possible to claim that any piece of writing can simultaneously break and reinforce its own claims? If that is the case, it reinforces the idea that art, of all forms of media, is in the eyes of the beholder. How can viewers definitively agree or disagree with claims made by media if the claims are ambiguous, and how does that affect the way we use those forms of media as evidence for other claims?