"Desiree's Baby" ---> "The Story of an Hour"

In both "Desiree's Baby" and "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin's I found both endings unsuspected. How Chopin wrote both story’s made her writing mean so much more than words on a page. The story and situations in each piece made the reader think outside the box about how a person’s world can be changed in an instant. In “Desiree’s Baby” a happy family is changed by the color of their child’s skin with blame pointed to the wrong person. Again a person’s world was changed when Desiree’s mother finds that Desiree killed both herself and child in the bayou. Once more the story is flipped around when Armand the child’s father finds out he is partial African American and it was truly his fault for his child’s skin color.

In the Story of an Hour” it is easy to tell that the news of a death brought joy or at least a sense of relief. A wife who finds through others words that her husband dies begins to rejoice in her own ways. Through her relief others would find her very sinister. In this life changing event of freedom her life is changed. In the end of the story her changing event is proven wrong and her hopes are gone with a deathly collapse to the floor changing someone’s life once again. Does this mean she still has freedom through ultimate relief?