Gender Roles and Marriage the two short stories I decided to compare and contrast are “Story of an Hour” by: Kate Chopin; and “The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck. In “The Story of an Hour,” the author talks about a married woman who discovers that her husband has been killed in a train accident. Her first reaction is devastation, she starts crying historically, then she goes into her room and thinks about her new found freedom. She looks out the window seeing all this new life and thinks about what hers will be like, as a new independent woman, she is now free. This feeling of freedom from marriage excites her but then she discovers that he is still alive and all of her new found freedom is taken away from her, giving her a heart attack. In the story of Chrysanthemums, there is a married couple. Their marriage was a typical marriage in the era when women were expected to take care of the house and garden and men were expected to work all day to provide for the family. Elisa Allen, Henry's wife, loves working in the garden on her chrysanthemums, she is a very strong and beautiful woman. She wants to do more on the business side of the relationship but she knows it's not for women. These two stories are very similar in the way women were treated in the past. They were treated as if they were not good enough to do a man's job and had fewer rights than men of the past. Both women in the short stories I read had similar experiences of oppression by men, but the overall outcome was different for the two women. The reason I thought it was because the authors of the stories differ in terms of gender, this plays a huge role in how the two main female characters' stories end.......middle paper......a lonely life for a woman, ma'am, and a scary life too, with animals crawling under the cart all night." Elisa is trying to be a strong woman, you see that when the handyman in the cart says that her life is not a life for a woman, she shows: “Her upper lip rose a little, showing her teeth. "How do you know? How can you know? she said." (Steinbeck 247) Elisa becomes very angry when she is told that she cannot do something that a man can do. But in the end ultimately, she gives up trying to be an equal not only in her marriage but also as a woman in society The author of this short story is a man named John Steinbeck He wrote this story in 1938, when the. Women were about to become more equal to men for having more votes than they would in the 1800s. However, women were still discriminated against by men and this is seen in his story John Steinbeck writes his point. view of women who try