Charlotte Brontë once wrote “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will”. There are many literary works that illustrate stories about freedom and how sometimes to get that freedom one needs to do something or it naturally comes. The short stories “Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros illustrate this idea of freedom. Both of this stories have different characters with different backgrounds, but they share something in common. Both women have to face some difficult moments concerning their marriage and its outcome. However, Chopin and Cisneros focuses on the idea of using simple objects like a window and a creek to symbolize the possibility …show more content…
At first, when she hears the name of the creek, which is “Woman Hollering Creek”, she wants to know if "the woman has hollered from anger or pain" (Cisneros 221). Because she sees the crossing of the creek as the crossing of a life of pain and anger. And indeed, her life and marriage was full of pain when her dream of passionate and epic love portrayed in telenovelas is destroyed when she sees the true man her husband really is when he starts beating her. However, this “left her speechless, motionless, numb” (Cisneros 222) because nobody in her family ever put a hand on her. But this is not the only hard situation she has to face. She knows that her husband, the father of her child is cheating on her and she doesn’t want to go back to her home because of the fear of shame and disgrace that she could get form her family and neighbors. However, everything changes even the symbolism of the creek at the end when she finally gets help form a women that sees the terrible treatment of her husbands toward her. She drives her back home, where they crossed the creek and for Cleofilas this was life changing. She knew that creek was called “Woman Hollering Creek” and the woman that helps her says that the creek “makes you want to holler like Tarzan” (Cisneros …show more content…
Mrs. Mallard as she grieves her husbands death she sees an opening of a new life for her as a free woman, just by looking through a window it awakens her emotions and it “enables her to feel harmony between her body and soul” (Jamil 217). It also fills her with joy, but that joy that kills because it was a joy that didn’t last, since the window is just a symbol of the possibility of freedom she dream of and that dream disappeared when she leaves her room and she notices that her husband wasn’t dead after all. On the other hand, Cleofilas after a series of horrible and rough moments with her husband, not having power in her house and with the “church and the Latino community for conspiring to commodify and control female sexuality” (Groover 193), she finally has the courage to confront her fear, and it took her several falls to finally realizes that she needed to live and face the reality of the real world, not the one in telenovelas. This two women with no power in their house, had to face difficult moments with their husband but it was those moments that lead them to feel and enjoy that possibility of freedom that pushed them to dream of a wonderful life or holler like