What's in a Name?-A Closer Look at the Names of Characters in Two Short Stories

Josh Proctor
English 1102
Dr. Perry
April 5th, 2011
What’s in a Name? A Closer Look at the Names of Characters in Two Short Stories
Many who appreciate literature hold “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros in high esteem, and a good portion of these critics consider both examples of groundbreaking feminist literature. “The Story of an Hour” is closely associated with the feminist reform movement that eventually led to the passage of the 19th Amendment. “The House on Mango Street” became a classic almost before it hit the bookshelves and helped to begin a movement among Female Latin-American writers. There is much to compare and to admire in these stories, even though nearly a century separates their publishing, but this paper will analyze the meanings behind the authors’ choices of names. In both stories, the names of the characters, of lack thereof, convey extra meaning; the names of characters in “The Story of an Hour” emphasize the implied subservient nature of women and the lack of a name in “The House on Mango Street” shows the forced de-emphasis of individuality in the young narrator’s life.
In real life and in fiction, a name is but a symbol that represents the personality and soul it is given to. We introduce somebody with their name as if they themselves are the embodiment of that word. In reality, this is no different from the application of titles such as “mother” and “father” which come to represent identities aside from the existent identities of those to which they are applied. When naming characters in a work of fiction, authors can take whatever liberties they wish, and therefore names are often the first and most powerful symbol the reader notices. Chopin uses this technique fully in “The Story of an Hour,” especially in the name of the main character, Louise Mallard. The name “Louise” is common enough, but it is hard to believe that Chopin chose it merely because it was a recognizable female name. The name itself is nothing more than the female form of the male name “Louis.” This seems to be a theme in the story: The sister’s name is Josephine, which is another feminine adaption of the male name “Joseph.” This theme is most likely not coincidental, especially since it suggests that based on their names, these women are merely seen as parts of the men they represent. Since Louise is not originally a female name, the implication is that “Louise” would have rather been “Louis” if she had been given the choice.
The main character’s last name is “Mallard,” which immediately suggests a reference to water fowl. If one checks the story for references to water and liquid, the results are numerous. “She wept at once” (Chopin 66), “breath of rain” (Chopin 66), “coursing blood” (Chopin 67), “drinking in a very elixir of life” (Chopin 67). These references, when coupled with the name Mallard, act to conjure up an image of a mother duck and her ducklings swimming peacefully and orderly in a lake or pond. In addition, the female mallard appears plain when compared to the beautiful and striking colors of the male. This combination of images is powerful when applied to the context of Chopin’s story, as it forces the reader to picture a graceful, yet plain creature performing motherly duties. This is Chopin’s way of showing readers her world’s view of women: graceful and pure, yet suppressed by motherly duties and societal demands and pale in comparison with men, or in other words, far from being free or self-reliant.
Our view of Mrs. Mallard shifts, then, when she gives in to “this thing that was approaching to possess her,” (Chopin 67) for afterwards she announces that with the death of her husband she is “Free! Body and soul free!” (Chopin 67). Yet there is a great deal of irony here between the image of the mother duck conjured up by Mrs. Mallard’s name and the way that Chopin portrays freedom. Before the freedom possesses her, she describes it as something she was waiting for “fearfully” (Chopin 67). It is “creeping out the sky” (Chopin 67) the same way a monster might creep towards a victim. This is an example of what Dan Shen calls “context-determined irony,” in which the irony is derived not from incongruence between words and their intended meaning but from the context of the story alone (Shen 115-116). Here, “the desire for freedom is ironically depicted as an external monster or ghost and its approaching scares Mrs. Mallard” (Shen 119). The irony comes not from the wording; the words are meant to say exactly what they mean. Instead, the passage is made ironic by the fact that freedom, something usually viewed in a positive light, is described as something monstrous and fear inducing.
The irony thickens when coupled with the image of the repressed, mother duck. When reading this story as an advocacy for feminist movement, we want to assume that every aspect is arguing against the status quo for women, with freedom and equality being the ultimate goals. Yet here we see freedom depicted as something that corrupts the beautiful Mrs. Mallard and eventually leads to her ironic death. However, Chopin is not saying that giving freedom to women will destroy them or make them impure. Rather, she is pulling us back into her time so that we can see how people in her world would view equality between the sexes. During the late 19th century, the idea of equal rights seemed as frightening to most Americans as a monster, and it seemed to be “creeping” into society right before the turn of the century and beyond. In contrast, it was easy to rationalize the familiar and poetic idea of a woman as the domestic counterpart to her husband, as evidenced by the image of the mother duck. However, Chopin builds up the images of the duck and monster of freedom so that the climax is more powerful: the freedom monster kills Mrs. Mallard, and in doing so destroys both the identity that could not exist because of societal oppression and the image of beauty that allowed such oppression to exist.
Like Chopin, Sandra Cisneros uses the names of characters in her stories to imply extra meaning. In the first vignette of “The House on Mango Street,” however, she leaves the name of the narrator and main character out of the text. Those who have read the entire text know that the narrator’s name is Esperanza and that it is discussed in detail in the fourth vignette. Yet the first vignette, which gives us no clues as to the narrator’s name, seems to stand on its own to represent the entire story from beginning to end. Therefore, we have a coming of age story in which the author has omitted the name of the main character in the beginning of the story. Truly a controversial approach at first glance.
Without a name to assign the main character, the next approach is to use personal pronouns. As the story is told from the first-person perspective, one would expect to see the pronoun “I” dominating the majority of sentence beginnings. Yet the first sentence begins with “We didn’t always live on Mango Street” (Cisneros 414). Although “I” appears multiple times throughout the vignette, the prevailing pronouns at the beginning are first-person plural pronouns such as “we” and “us” that are used to tell the story from the perspective of the narrator’s entire family.
Even the most omniscient of narrators are ultimately at the will and mercy of the author, and so it becomes difficult to assign terms like “behavior” to the diction and phrases of Esperanza’s narration. However, the story is obviously written from her perspective, and therefore it can be safely assumed that the narration reflects her opinions and is not in itself devoid of her point of view. This is evidenced by the appearance of the pronoun “I” in higher quantities at the conclusion of “The House on Mango Street,” which suggests that the narrator has begun to separate herself from her family both in her perception of life and her perception of self. Katherine Crawford-Garrett explains this shift by comparing Esperanza’s perspective to the spectator theories of James Britton and D. W. Harding (Crawford-Garrett 95). In short, Esperanza’s role in the story shifts from a participant role at the beginning towards a spectator role. This shift from being a part of the world around her to merely sitting on the sidelines eventually allows Esperanza to distance herself long enough to form her own identity and leave Mango Street behind her (Crawford-Garrett 95).Yet at the beginning, she appears quite conflicted in her use of pronouns and for the most part clings to the plural “we.” This internal conflict serves to foreshadow the insecurity to come.
Although Cisneros’s ability to convey meanings in the simple use of personal pronouns is impressive, the real question begs to be asked: what is the purpose of omitting the main character’s name if she is to be one of the interacting characters in the story?
In much the same way that Mrs. Mallard’s name serves to represent her repressed nature as a woman, the lack of a name in “The House on Mango Street” represents how weak the narrator’s sense of individuality is at this point. Indeed, the only progression in perspective we see is the aforementioned shift from the narrator’s referring to herself as part of the family unit to her using the singular personal pronouns “I” and “me.” This relationship between the two stories goes further: the use of names, or the lack thereof, by both authors allows the reader insight into the oppressed nature of the woman. Mrs. Mallard’s oppressors are her husband and the society around her, while Esperanza’s oppressors appear to be her family’s limited view of the roles of women as dictated by their Mexican heritage.
Although the techniques used by both authors are similar, each author has her own unique goal, and the endings of the stories make these differences very clear when compared side-by-side. Mrs. Mallard’s dream of freedom, a spawn of her possession by the “thing” that takes her over, is ultimately crushed by the appearance of her husband. In creating such a tragic and contextually ironic ending, Chopin warns us of the dangers of too much freedom, and shows us the possible outcome of the entry of a free woman into a society that is not accepting of equal rights based on gender. It becomes evident that Chopin’s world is very limited in its appreciation of freedom, which is a stark contrast to the world in “The House on Mango Street,” where freedom exists outside the confines of the narrator’s neighborhood. “The House on Mango Street” does more than merely outline a way in which a young woman is oppressed by those around her; it details a specific way in which she overcomes such oppression. By removing herself from the limited perspective of an active member of the neighborhood community, emphasized by the shift from “we” to “I,” the narrator allows herself to adopt the viewpoint that she can live her life for herself, just not in the house on Mango Street. Thus, her solution is obvious and Cisneros gives it to us at the ending of the first vignette: “…I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to” (Cisneros 415). Once the narrator has gained her individuality, the only thing holding her back is her location, which is possible to change after she has broken her ties to her current world. “But this isn’t it. The house on Mango Street isn’t it” (Cisneros 415).



















Works Cited
Crawford-Garrett, Katherine. "Leaving Mango Street: Speech, Action and the Construction of Narrative in Britton’s Spectator Stance." Children's Literature in Education 40.2 (2009): 95-108. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 28 Mar. 2011.
Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Literature: A Portable Anthology. 'Ed'. Janet E. Gardner, Beverly Lawn, Jack Ridl, Peter Schakel. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. Print.
Cisneros, Sandra. "The House on Mango Street." Literature: A Portable Anthology. . Janet E. Gardner, Beverly Lawn, Jack Ridl, Peter Schakel. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2009. Print.
Shen, Dan. "Non-ironic turning ironic contextually: Multiple context-determined irony in “The Story of an Hour”." Journal of Literary Semantics 38.2 (2009): 115-130. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 28 Mar. 2011.