It has always been common sense to me that happiness varies between people, but the extent to which is differs has never really crossed my mind. I didn’t really care as long as everyone was happy in their own way. Or at least that’s what I thought. My perspective on that changed a bit when I came across selected short stories. The character in these stories and they way they represent happiness is very different from each other, and even more so, where different from me. Birthmark, by Nathanial Hawthorne, tells a bittersweet tale of Aylmer and his displease with his, so called “flawed” wife, Georgiana, because of a birthmark on her cheek. Here, the happiness of Aylmer is contingent on the removal of the birthmark and his obsession with perfection. Although it is never explicitly shown, the happiness of Georgiana, however, seems to depend on the happiness of her husband and the relationship as a whole. She seems to be tired of Aylmer’s disgust with her and their distancing relationship. I see this as so because she never had a problem with her own birthmark at first; in fact, she viewed it as a charm. But as Aylmer points it out and hounds her about it day and night, she begins to fall into a rather anxious state, wanting to remove the birthmark to save the relationship. In the end, she even went as far as to risk her life just to be in a happier relationship again. Birthmark is reminiscent to Ernest Hemingway’s, Hills Like White Elephants in the sense that Jig, the female character of the story, doesn’t seem to have her own sense of happiness that isn’t contingent on her partner’s and the relationship. In this story, Jig seems to want the baby and not want such a reckless life anymore; this may be her deep down happiness but it is never actually shown or portrayed by the character. Instead, it seems that her happiness depends on how much the American will love her. This kind of “happiness” is enough to drive her to not care about herself and abort the baby. In the end, she even smiles and tells the American, “I’m fine.” Obviously, this to me doesn’t make sense because her want to be happy is not to be happy for herself but to be happy for her man and the relationship as a whole.
What I found personally disturbing about these two stories is that they both seem to depict happiness as something that is actually unhappy for themselves because they’re forcing their own happiness for someone else’s (confusing AND ironic, I know). This isn’t necessarily a uniform view of happiness (and by no means am I saying that everyone should be selfish and only care about their own happiness), but it is showing a pattern of how WOMEN perceive happiness, in terms of trying to please the men too hard. The Story of An Hour by Kate Chopin on the other hand seems to be the opposite. Mrs. Louise Mallard seems is portrayed to be a frail woman, so you obviously assume she wouldn’t make decisions for herself opposed to the healthier and more youthful Jig and Georgiana. However, Mrs. Mallard’s happiness did not seem to depend on her partner, but rather the freedom from that partner. When she was imagining being free from her husband and the marriage, she had all these visions and sensations and good feelings. Unlike the other two female characters, Mrs. Mallard was the one character that wanted to be happy for herself and not the others. Her type of happiness is what I abide by more and I see her as a stronger character as opposed to Jig and Georgiana as well.
