Short Stories About Freedom: 10 Classics Explained
Quick answer: Ten classic short stories about freedom, from The Story of an Hour and The Yellow Wallpaper to Eveline, Mumu and The Door in the Wall, summarised and compared.
Freedom in the short story is nearly always someone else's idea of it going wrong. A woman freed by a telegram, a man freed by a bet, a serf freed by drowning his own dog: these are stories about the moment a door opens and the character finds out what they are.
The collection begins with the women's stories that made the theme modern, moves through the prisoners and the doors, and ends with a wanderer who chooses a mountain over a marriage. Each title links to a page that summarises the story and explains its ending.
The stories
The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin. Louise Mallard, told her husband is dead, sits by an open window and finds that grief is not the only thing arriving. The word she whispers to herself is the story's centre, and the front door is its end.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. A woman prescribed rest for her nerves is confined to a nursery with barred windows and paper she comes to believe has a woman moving behind it. She sets about freeing her.
Eveline by James Joyce. Eveline Hill, nineteen, has promised to leave Dublin with a sailor for Buenos Aires and sits at the window with two letters in her lap. At the North Wall she grips the iron railing.
The Revolt of Mother by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Sarah Penn has kept house for forty years in a home her husband promised to replace, and when he builds a barn instead she moves the family into it while he is away. The minister comes to reason with her and leaves.
Sultana's Dream by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. A woman falls asleep in Calcutta and wakes in Ladyland, where the men have been shut indoors for their own good and the women run the country on solar heat and rain harvested from the sky. The war was won without a single weapon.
The Bet by Anton Chekhov. A banker wagers two million roubles that a young lawyer cannot endure fifteen years of solitary confinement, and the lawyer accepts. On the last night the banker goes to the lodge with a different plan, and finds a letter.
The Door in the Wall by H. G. Wells. Lionel Wallace, a rising politician, tells a friend about a green door in a white wall he found as a small boy, and the garden beyond it, and how he has seen the door again at the moments of his life when he was hurrying somewhere important. He has always walked past.
Mumu by Ivan Turgenev. Gerasim, a deaf-mute serf of enormous strength, is brought from the fields to a Moscow household and finds one thing to love, a small dog. His mistress cannot sleep for its barking, and he is given an order.
The Cat That Walked by Himself by Rudyard Kipling. In the wet wild woods the Woman tames Dog, Horse and Cow with bargains, and the Cat comes to the cave to make a bargain of his own. He gets the fire and the milk and keeps the woods.
The Country of the Blind by H. G. Wells. A mountaineer falls into a hidden Andean valley whose people have been blind for generations and assumes he will rule them. They think he is defective, and their doctors propose a cure.
Reading them together
The collection's argument is that freedom is a thing characters discover they want only when it is briefly available. Louise Mallard has an hour, Eveline has a gangway, Wallace has a door he keeps passing, Chekhov's lawyer has fifteen years to decide what the two million means. Freeman's Sarah Penn is the exception who acts and wins, and her story is the least discussed because of it.
Set Mumu against The Country of the Blind. Gerasim frees himself by doing the one thing that ends his last attachment, while Nunez frees himself by refusing the surgery that would let him belong, and both walk away from a house toward open ground.
If you want to write about freedom
What writers can take from this
- Read The Story of an Hour and Eveline together; both women sit at a window and one of them gets up.
- The Yellow Wallpaper is best read in one sitting, since the diary entries shorten as the narrator changes.
- Sultana's Dream, from 1905, predates most Western feminist utopias; read it for the engineering.
- In The Bet, keep count of what the lawyer reads in each five-year period.
- Mumu is the hardest ending here; give yourself a moment before the next story.
Try it yourself
Write a story in which a character is unexpectedly given the freedom they have privately wanted for years, and spends the story finding out whether they still want it.
Questions
What is the best short story about freedom?
The Story of an Hour is the most taught, and The Yellow Wallpaper the most written about. Mumu is the one Russian readers name first.
Which short stories about freedom are good for students?
The Story of an Hour, Eveline, The Bet and The Revolt of Mother are short and turn on a single decision. Sultana's Dream and The Door in the Wall are good for classes on utopia and escape.
Which classic story about freedom is the shortest?
The Story of an Hour, at about a thousand words, then Eveline at roughly two thousand.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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