Story of an Hour ~ Relationships

How are relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles) portrayed in the story? 

In the Story of an Hour, we see how the author interprets the roles of men and women in the world, or more particularly, in marriage. The story deals with a wife receiving the news that her husband had died. At first she grieved for the loss, but after a while she came to the realization that she was free. This tells us what the author thought about a woman's role in marriage. How she is not free with a husband, and that the husband in some way controls the wife. You get the feeling that she did love him, but at times it feels like it suggested that she was conditioned to feel that way. Such as when they mentioned that the wife tried to beat down the "horrific" thoughts of freedom. As if it suggested that she was conditioned to feel love for her husband or that she should never act independently from him. In that sense, the husband from this point of view is a jailer, while the wife is the prisoner. When the wife accepts these thoughts of freedom, she begins to wish life would go on, as opposed to when her husband was alive and she feared a long life. In this way the author is stating that a woman is tied down by her husband, and thus is not "free." This reveals the stance the author has on their views of marriage. The irony was that her husband wasn't dead, but the wife ended up dying in a sort of retribution for having these thoughts, which suggests that women shouldn't think like that.

I find this story interesting because it shows up how much has changed since this story was created. I am not discounting that some marriages may feel like prisons, but woman have certainly gained a lot more ground than previously, especially in cases of divorce settlement and child custody. Many of the strides made are from our more recent decades, and it reflects how much is changing in the world today. More people are supportive of woman's right than ever before, especially since the past few hundred years. A scenario like this in today's society would favor the woman in a more sympathetic light than the people of the past would have. The relationships between men and women have vastly improved since then, and will probably continue to improve in the future.