How to Write an Analytical Paper on The Story of an Hour and Désirée’s Baby
Structuring your thesis, getting 16 story quotes to actually work, finding a legitimate third source, and keeping APA citations clean when paragraph numbers replace page numbers. Every part of this assignment, broken down.
Two short stories. One author. One assignment that asks you to compare them across four body paragraphs, pull two quotes from each story per paragraph, add three academic sources, and format everything in APA. That’s a lot of moving pieces. The structure isn’t complicated — but if you approach it wrong, you end up with a paper that reads like a summary instead of an analysis. This guide tells you how to approach each part.
What This Guide Covers
Assignment Requirements at a Glance
Before anything else, map what the rubric actually requires. This assignment has five graded criteria: Content, Organization, Style/Language, Sentence Structure, and Format/Crediting Sources. Each one has a clear target. The fastest way to lose points is to miss a structural requirement entirely.
Paper Requirement Checklist
The professor’s comment on the rough draft was direct: you need a minimum of 3 sources beyond the literature itself. That means the two Chopin stories do not count. You need three separate academic sources — and at least one of them has to come from a library database. Get this fixed before the final draft. It’s an easy mark to lose on a technicality.
Writing a Strong Thesis
Your thesis is doing all the heavy lifting. A weak thesis — something like “Both stories show that women were oppressed” — tells the reader nothing they couldn’t guess from the title. It’s also not arguable. What makes a thesis work is specificity: which literary techniques, what claim about those techniques, and what that claim reveals about something larger.
Name the Techniques + Make a Specific Claim
A working formula: In [Story 1] and [Story 2], Chopin uses [technique 1], [technique 2], and [technique 3] to argue that [specific claim about marriage / gender / power / race]. The techniques become your four paragraph topics. The “specific claim” is what your analysis actually proves.
Example direction: If your four paragraphs cover freedom/oppression, irony, symbolism, and the institution of marriage — your thesis should name all four and connect them to a single overarching argument about how Chopin exposes patriarchal power as something that destroys women regardless of race or class.Your introduction should do three things: give background on Chopin and the historical context of the stories, briefly summarize each story (a sentence or two each), and then end with the thesis. The thesis is the last sentence of the introduction. It tells the reader exactly what the paper will argue and how.
How to Structure the Paper
Introduction (roughly half a page)
Background on Chopin as an author — who she was, when she wrote, what she was doing in her fiction. Mention that both stories were published in the 1890s and set in the American South. A sentence or two summarizing each story. End with a clear thesis that names your literary elements and your central claim.
Body Paragraph 1 — First Comparison Point
Topic sentence introduces your first subtopic. Then: quote from The Story of an Hour → explain it → connect to thesis. Second quote from The Story of an Hour → explain → connect. Then do the same with two quotes from Désirée’s Baby. If you have a research source that supports this point, work it in here.
Body Paragraphs 2–4 — Same Structure Each Time
Repeat the same format for each remaining subtopic. Topic sentence → two story-of-an-hour quotes with explanation → two Désirée’s Baby quotes with explanation → connection to thesis. Each paragraph should feel like it’s building on the previous one, not just starting fresh.
Conclusion (roughly half a page)
Restate your thesis in different words — don’t copy-paste it. Then step back. What does Chopin’s argument mean beyond these two stories? Why does it matter in 2026? What did you figure out about her writing that someone reading casually might miss? That’s the “wider implications” the rubric asks for.
Body Paragraphs: The 4-Quote Problem
Four quotes per paragraph sounds like a lot. And if you just drop them in without explanation, the paragraph will feel like a quote dump. The professor warned about this specifically. Every single quote needs to be explained and connected to the thesis. That’s not optional — it’s the difference between meeting and exceeding expectations on the Content rubric.
What Doesn’t Work
Using a quote and immediately moving to the next quote. Using a quote that doesn’t clearly support the paragraph’s topic sentence. Explaining the quote’s literal meaning but not connecting it to your overall argument. Having quotes that are too long — the rubric says to keep direct quotations minimal.
What Does Work
Introduce the quote briefly, quote it, explain what it shows, then say how it supports your thesis. Two or three sentences of explanation per quote is reasonable. Keep quotes to a sentence or a clause — not a full paragraph. If you can paraphrase instead and still make the point, do that.
The Pattern That Makes Every Paragraph Work
For each of your four quotes: set up what’s happening in the story at that moment (one sentence), drop in the quote with proper APA citation, explain what the quote reveals (one to two sentences), then tie it back to your thesis point (one sentence). That’s five to six sentences per quote. Four quotes at that rate gives you a solid, fully developed paragraph.
Practical note: Don’t open a paragraph with a quote. Start with your topic sentence, then a sentence of context, then the quote. Starting with a direct quotation is a weak move — the reader doesn’t know what they’re looking at yet.Finding That Third Academic Source
This is the fix the professor is asking for. You need at least three sources beyond the stories. Here’s where students get stuck: they assume the third source has to be literary criticism specifically about Chopin. It doesn’t.
Your Required First Stop
At least one source must come from your library database. JSTOR, PsycINFO, Academic Search Complete — log in through your university’s library portal. Search: “19th century women marriage American South” or “gender oppression Victorian era women.”
Broader Context Sources
A peer-reviewed article on women’s legal status in 19th-century America, coverture laws, or the Married Women’s Property Acts gives your paper real historical grounding. That’s exactly the kind of contextual source the professor said is acceptable.
For the Désirée’s Baby Angle
A source on racial identity in the antebellum or post-Reconstruction American South ties directly to the Désirée’s Baby argument. Search: “racial passing American South literature” or “one-drop rule social construction.” JSTOR will have peer-reviewed articles on this.
Direct Chopin Scholarship
If you want a source that’s directly about Chopin, the Kate Chopin International Society lists published scholarship. Take those titles to your library database to find the peer-reviewed versions.
Coercive Control & Autonomy
Research on coercive control in intimate relationships or the psychology of autonomy maps directly onto what both stories dramatize. Search PsycINFO: “coercive control intimate partner” or “autonomy suppression marriage.” You’ll find peer-reviewed sources quickly.
Sources That Won’t Count
Wikipedia, SparkNotes, Cliffsnotes, general websites, blogs, or non-academic articles. Your professor said peer-reviewed. Verify every source has a DOI or is in a recognized academic journal before you cite it.
You only need to cite each source once — but you do need to cite all three. One easy approach: if a source supports your broader comparison point about marriage and patriarchal control, you can weave in one sentence with a paraphrase and citation at the end of one of your body paragraphs. That satisfies the “cited at least once” requirement without forcing a source into a place it doesn’t belong.
APA Citations for Short Stories
Short stories don’t have page numbers. That’s not an APA mistake — it’s just how it works with digital texts. Here’s how to handle it cleanly.
| Situation | What to Do | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Quoting from either story | Use paragraph number in the in-text citation | (Chopin, 1894, para. 10) |
| Two Chopin entries in reference list | Differentiate by year — they’re different works published in different years | Chopin (1892) vs. Chopin (1894) |
| Quoting a journal article | Use page number as normal | (Hassan & Tayib, 2020, p. 45) |
| Paraphrasing a source | Author and year only — no page/para number needed | (Choudhury et al., 2025) |
| Reference list — short story from a website | Author, year, title in italics, URL | Chopin, K. (1894). The story of an hour. https://archive.vcu.edu/… |
Both stories are short enough to count paragraphs manually. Open the text, number the paragraphs yourself, and keep track of which quote comes from which paragraph. It takes ten minutes and saves you from losing points on every citation in your paper. The professor specifically mentioned not forgetting page/paragraph numbers in citations.
Four Comparison Points That Work
You need four body paragraph topics. They should be distinct enough to each carry their own paragraph, but connected enough to support one central thesis. Here are four that hold up across both stories:
Freedom vs. Oppression as Theme
Both stories are fundamentally about what it means to be free — or not — as a woman in 19th-century America. Louise Mallard experiences a sudden, jarring taste of it and it’s immediately taken back. Désirée never had it at all. This theme shows up in concrete, quotable moments in both texts and sets up everything else in your analysis.
Third source connection: Historical or legal scholarship on women’s rights in the 1890s fits naturally here. The legal concept of coverture — where a married woman had no separate legal identity from her husband — gives you real scholarly grounding for this point.Dramatic Irony
Chopin uses irony in both stories to reveal the gap between what society sees and what’s actually happening. The doctors in The Story of an Hour misread Louise’s death completely. Armand in Désirée’s Baby destroys his wife over a racial heritage that turns out to be his own. The irony is never comic — it’s tragic, and it’s doing argument work for Chopin.
Scholarly angle: Literary criticism on irony in Chopin’s work exists. A source like the Hassan and Tayib (2020) article on irony in Chopin’s short stories fits directly here if you can access the full text through your library.Symbolism of Setting
Chopin’s settings are not background. They are argument. The open window and signs of spring in The Story of an Hour mirror Louise’s awakening — fragile, partial, not yet free. The estate of L’Abri in Désirée’s Baby is described with language that evokes a tomb: shadowed oaks, a steep black roof, a pall. Chopin makes doom architectural.
Close reading tip: This paragraph rewards specific, careful attention to word choice. Pull quotes that show the setting language itself — don’t summarize what the setting “means.” Let the actual words do the work.Marriage as an Institution of Control
Both stories show marriage not as partnership but as ownership. A husband gives a woman her name, her social identity, her place in the world — and can take all of it away. Armand does it explicitly. Louise feels it as a weight she didn’t even know she was carrying until it lifted. This is Chopin’s critique of the institution itself, not just individual bad husbands.
Source opportunity: Academic writing on 19th-century marriage law, coverture, or the Married Women’s Property Acts supports this argument directly and gives you a peer-reviewed citation that doesn’t have to be about Chopin at all.Mistakes That Lose Marks
Summary Instead of Analysis
Telling the reader what happens in the story rather than what the story means. “Louise learns her husband is dead and feels free” is summary. “Chopin frames Louise’s joy as evidence of how completely marriage had erased her selfhood” is analysis.
Analyze the Technique, Not the Plot
Ask yourself: what is Chopin doing here, not just what is happening? Focus on how the author uses language, structure, and imagery to make a point — not on what the characters do next.
Dropping Quotes Without Explanation
Quoting a line and immediately moving on. The professor warned specifically about this. An unexplained quote is just a placeholder — it doesn’t count as evidence until you’ve said what it shows and why it matters.
Quote → Explain → Connect
Every quote gets at least two sentences: one explaining what the quote reveals, one connecting it to the thesis. If you can’t write those two sentences, you may have chosen the wrong quote. Go back and find one you can actually say something about.
Only Two Academic Sources
This is exactly what the professor flagged. The stories don’t count. You need three separate academic sources. Missing one is an automatic loss of points in the Format/Crediting Sources rubric — and it signals to the grader that you didn’t read the assignment carefully.
Find the Third Source First
Before you write a word of the final draft, lock down all three sources. Search your library database, verify they’re peer-reviewed, and decide where in the paper each one will go. Don’t leave this for last — it takes more time than you expect.
Missing Paragraph Numbers in Citations
Citing (Chopin, 1894) without a paragraph number loses credibility — and potentially points. The professor called this out specifically. When quoting a text without page numbers, you must indicate where in the text the quote appears.
Count the Paragraphs Now
Open both stories, number each paragraph, record which quote comes from which paragraph. Do this once and you won’t have to go back. Both stories are short enough that this takes under fifteen minutes total.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Research Paper Writing Help Get StartedStart With the Stories. Not SparkNotes.
The most common version of this paper that underperforms is written from memory or from a plot summary website. Your professor knows those texts. The rubric asks for close reading — that means you’re looking at specific language choices, not retelling events.
Read both stories once to understand what happens. Read them again to find language that stands out — unusual word choices, moments where the tone shifts, descriptions that feel heavier than the scene requires. Those are your quotes. Once you’ve collected more than you need, pick the ones you can actually say something analytical about.
The third source problem is easy to fix. Your library database, fifteen minutes of searching, one peer-reviewed article on gender or race or 19th-century marriage law. Get that in your reference list before anything else. Everything else in this paper you already know how to do — the source was the only missing piece.