Struggles of Woman and Man
Both The Story of an Hour and Clever Manka, are very short stories about a man and a women, both having struggles in their marriage. However, the two women have distinctly different qualities, making the ending very different in the two stories. Clever Mankas husband has a much greater involvement in the story than that of The Story of an Hour; therefore, we do not have both sides of the conflict in their marriage. It also makes it difficult to determine the thoughts and actions of the husband. Both stories show the thematic struggle between men and women.
Manka was a very strong willed women with quite the wit about her. She was not afraid to go up against her husband morally, or mentally. She made sure that he knew how she felt about a situation and was not afraid to prove it to him. Manka would fight for what she believed in and would do anything to get what she wanted. She loved her husband very much. Mrs. Mallard was very weak and the author showed this by talking about her weak heart. She did not seem to love her husband and was glad to be free from him at last when she thought he was dead. Had she have been as strong as Manka and did not want to be married, she would have just left her husband. But since she was weak she stayed in her marriage, even though she was very unhappy, or thought she was.
In the burgomasters case he sent home a riddle to the two parties, and the man that answered the riddle correctly would win the case. He asked and asked the winner who gave him the answer, he had to know. When the man told him it was his daughter, he then sent another riddle to the daughter (Manka) and once again with her cleverness she had the right answer, so then the burgomaster wanted to marry her. He told her she must never interfere with any of his cases, or she would have to leave. Mrs. Mallards husband was never in the story, and her conflict seemed to be with him, but within her. When she found out he was dead, she seemed to be happy about it. She thought that life was just beginning for her now that she was free. We have no way of knowing how Mr. Mallard felt about the situation.
Mankas husband tried on several occasions to outwit his wife with one of his riddles, but it always seemed to backfire on him. His wife was very intelligent and could stay right with the burgomasters wit. On one case, Manka just knew he had ruled the wrong way, so she went to the party that lost and told them how to handle it and get the burgomaster to correct his error. When he did, the burgomaster knew that Manka had interfered. He told her she had to leave, but that she could take the one thing from the house that she wanted the most. So she kidnapped her husband in his sleep and took him with her. Mrs. Mallard found out that her husband had died, and she cried. She never once asked for proof. She locked herself in her room and came to terms with her husbands death. She decided that her life had just begun.
When Mankas husband woke and asked what she had done that for, she told him that you are the only thing in that house I want. Outwitted again, he laughed and agreed that Manka could help him with his tough cases. They lived happily ever after. But when Mrs. Mallard left her bedroom to start her knew life without her husband, the door opened and her husband walked through it alive. Her heart gave out from the shock and she died. We never knew how her husband felt about her death. People thought she died from the relief of her husband being alive, but as a reader we know that it was the shock that her new life was not to be.
Chopin, Kate. A Story of An Hour. The Compact Bedford Introduction To Literature.
Ed. Michael Meyer. 7th ed. Boston:
Bedfort /St. Martins, 2006. 15-17. In text citation (Chopin 15)
Clever Manka. Introduction to Literature. Eds. Alice S. Landy
and William Rodney Allen. 6th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
2006. 17-21. In text citation (Manka)
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