Chopin was born on February 8, 1851 and her father was killed in a train accident in 1855. Her father's death was a great influence on his mother and her attitude. Chopin highlights this change in his mother in his short story “The Story of an Hour”. Chopin married at the age of twenty and had five children in ten years of marriage. Living the life of a mother and wife in the 19th century angered Chopin, because at the time, women did not have as many rights or as many freedoms as men. This lack of rights and freedoms was a constant theme in his writings. In 1879, her husband died, leaving Chopin with five children and heavy debts. The following year, his mother also died, and both deaths devastated Chapin. Chapin viewed the loss of the two people closest to her as a feeling of freedom, one that other women were not allowed to enjoy at that time in history. In 1888, with her newfound freedom, she began writing her short stories and used her experiences of three major deaths in her family as an example in her stories..