Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour received a mixed reaction when first published. Released into a male dominated world, the story supports equality for women. The idea that a wife could feel free, free, free and have a look of triumph in her eyes after hearing about her husband’s death was unheard of. It is fortunate that Chopin decided to end the story with Louise dying from joy that kills. One critic has suggested that it would never have been published if she had lived happily ever after. Themes include identity, marriage (oppression vs. love), personal freedom, and grief. More…
The Chosen Vessel
This story by Barbara Baynton paints a graphic picture of the isolation and dangers faced by women living in ‘outback’ Australia during the 19th century. A ‘swagman’ traveling the countryside looking for work visits a woman on a farm whose husband is away. She does not like the way he looks at her, and locks herself and her baby in their house. The man is about to break in when they hear a horse rider coming. The woman runs outside and calls for help. However, when the horse rider hears and then sees her, he races away in fright. More…
The Dead Past
In this story by Isaac Asimov a young physicist, indignant at apparent government suppression of research in a fringe area of science, secretly builds a home “chronoscope” that can look back in time up to one hundred and fifty years. Too late, the government learns of this and tries to censor his work, pointing out the potential for his machine to destroy an important aspect of life everyone takes for granted. Themes include scientific curiosity and freedom, government disinformation and control (in this case for the greater good), privacy, guilt. More…
The Alienist
In this satirical novella by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, a brilliant physician relocates to his hometown in Brazil and convinces the council to build the region’s first madhouse. Rebellion stirs when, having incarcerated all the truly insane, the overzealous doctor begins to lock up townspeople who are eccentric or unusually talented. As the number of inmates reaches 80% of the population, the doctor decides upon a new definition of madness. Everyone is released, new townspeople are taken in and treated, until eventually only one “madman” remains. Themes insanity, ambition, scientific fallibility, abuse of power, self-serving politics, revolution and counter-revolution. More…
Last Courtesies
This story by Ella Leffland contrasts the way the protagonist, a widow in her late fifties, handles life’s challenges with the approaches taken by her dignified, “old-fashioned” aunt and an eccentric, sometimes mentally unstable friend of her aunt who has appointed himself her “protector”. Unable to cope with noisy neighbors and daily problems following the death of her aunt and long-time companion, the woman suffers a nervous breakdown. After an argument with her “protector”, she falls prey to a vicious serial killer. Themes include alienation and isolation, eccentricity, judgement, passivity vs. assertiveness, rudeness vs. civility, fear, violence. More…