In “The Story of An Hour” written by Kate Chopin, a women, who is married is killed by something that bought her joy. The story starts off with a woman, Mrs. Mallard, being told that her husband was killed in an train accident by her sister Josephine and her husband’s friend Richard. Richard was the first to know of the accident because he was at the newspaper office when the news of the accident was first received. He checked a second time to make sure it was in fact Brently Mallard, Mrs. Mallard husband, before he hurried over to share the news with her. “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance” (Chopin). As the story continues Mrs. Mallard goes into her room …show more content…
Mallard began to feel different. A feeling arose in her that at first she didn’t know what it was. “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air” (Chopin). As she tried to fight it she couldn’t and the words “free” came from her lips. “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself” (Chopin). Mrs. Mallard felt as if she was free to live her life again but at first she wasn’t too proud to admit it. “Her heart was beating fast but the blood pumping threw her body relaxed her.” There were no signs of trouble in the marriage between the husband and wife but somedays Mrs. Mallard didn’t love her husband. She felt as if nobody should be tied down or forced to be with somebody in a marriage.
“The story gives evidence that Louise’s emotions are affected by the physical absence of her husband. After recognizing the joy, she feels upon learning of her husband’s supposed death, Louise reflects on her feelings: “She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead”
Pg. 278, 279). Her sister then comes into the room and tells her “open the door--- you will make yourself ill.” (Pg. 279), and she is afraid that she will hurt herself. So, Mrs. Mallard finally came out of her room, hugged her sister, and went downstairs with her sister and Richards. Then, the twist in the story comes.
Mrs. Mallard's confusion begins by her first feeling "sudden, wild abandonment, " but then a short while after begins to have strange feelings of relief.
In The Story of an Hour, the main character, Mrs. Louise Mallard, is a young woman with a heart condition who learns of her husband’s untimely death in a railroad disaster. Instinctively weeping as any woman is expected to do upon learning of her husband’s death, she retires to her room to be left alone so she may collect her thoughts. However, the thoughts she collects are somewhat unexpected. Louise is conflicted with the feelings and emotions that are “approaching to possess her...” (Chopin 338). Unexpectedly, joy and happiness consume her with the epiphany she is “free, free, free!” (Chopin 338). Louise becomes more alive with the realization she will no longer be oppressed by the marriage as many women of her day were, and hopes for a long life when only the day prior, “…she had thought with a shudder that life may ...
Louise Mallard has not yet heard the news of her husband’s death. As the news is revealed to her she went into a state of unhappiness, and she had a hard time “accepting the significance” (463). She “wept at once” with “wild abandonment” and the “storm of grief” (463), passed over and she went alone to her bedroom with no one to follow her. The author describes in the previous sentence that the storm of grief has passed over her,
Chopin describes her joy as “monstrous” to indicate that Mrs. Mallard knows she should not be happy, but she cannot help it as it is her first taste of freedom in her entire
In "The Story of an Hour" Kate Chopin tells the story of a woman, Mrs. Mallard whose husband is thought to be dead. Throughout the story Chopin describes the emotions Mrs. Mallard felt about the news of her husband's death. However, the strong emotions she felt were not despair or sadness, they were something else. In a way she was relieved more than she was upset, and almost rejoiced in the thought of her husband no longer living. In using different literary elements throughout the story, Chopin conveys this to us on more than one occasion.
The story begins on a very sad note especially in the eyes of a reader. Mrs. Mallard is said to have a “heart
Most women in Mrs Mallard’s situation were expected to be upset at the news of her husbands death, and they would worry more about her heart trouble, since the news could worsen her condition. However, her reaction is very different. At first she gets emotional and cries in front of her sister and her husbands friend, Richard. A little after, Mrs. Mallard finally sees an opportunity of freedom from her husbands death. She is crying in her bedroom, but then she starts to think of the freedom that she now has in her hands. “When she abandoned herse...
She would not have grieved over someone she did not love. Even in the heat of her passion, she thinks about her lost love. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked safe with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. Her love may not have been the greatest love of all time, but it was still love. Marriage was not kind to Mrs. Mallard, her life was dull and not worth living, her face showed the years of repression.
Kate Chopin’s short story, “The Story of an Hour”, is about a woman, named Louise Mallard, in the late 1800s who is told that her husband, Brently, has died in a railroad accident. Initially, Louise is surprised, distressed, and drowned in sorrow. After mourning the loss, the woman realizes that she is finally free and independent, and that the only person she has to live for is herself. She becomes overwhelmed with joy about her new discovery of freedom, and dreams of all of the wonderful events in life that lie ahead of her. Louise’s sister finally convinces her to leave her room and come back into reality. While Louise is walking down her steps, her husband surprisingly enters through the door because he was actually not killed in the accident. At the same moment, Louise collapses and dies, supposedly from “heart disease-of joy that kills” (Chopin 706).
Mrs. Mallard is an ill woman who is “afflicted with heart trouble” and had to be told very carefully by her sister and husband’s friend that her husband had died (1609). Her illness can be concluded to have been brought upon her by her marriage. She was under a great amount of stress from her unwillingness to be a part of the relationship. Before her marriage, she had a youthful glow, but now “there was a dull stare in her eyes” (1610). Being married to Mr. Mallard stifled the joy of life that she once had. When she realizes the implications of her husband’s death, she exclaims “Free! Body and soul free!” (1610). She feels as though a weight has been lifted off her shoulders and instead of grieving for him, she rejoices for herself. His death is seen as the beginn...
She realizes that this is the benefit of her husband’s death. She has no one to live for in the coming years but herself. Moments after this revelation, her thought to be deceased husband walks through the front door. He had not died after all. The shock of his appearance kills Mrs. Mallard.
In the short story, “The Story of an Hour,” author Kate Chopin presents the character of Mrs. Louis Mallard. She is an unhappy woman trapped in her discontented marriage. Unable to assert herself or extricate herself from the relationship, she endures it. The news of the presumed death of her husband comes as a great relief to her, and for a brief moment she experiences the joys of a liberated life from the repressed relationship with her husband. The relief, however, is short lived. The shock of seeing him alive is too much for her bear and she dies. The meaning of life and death take on opposite meaning for Mrs. Mallard in her marriage because she lacked the courage to stand up for herself.
idea of resuming her former life is unbearably grim. When Mrs. Mallard sees that her
The first reader has a guided perspective of the text that one would expect from a person who has never studied the short story; however the reader makes some valid points which enhance what is thought to be a guided knowledge of the text. The author describes Mrs. Mallard as a woman who seems to be the "victim" of an overbearing but occasionally loving husband. Being told of her husband's death, "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance." (This shows that she is not totally locked into marriage as most women in her time). Although "she had loved him--sometimes," she automatically does not want to accept, blindly, the situation of being controlled by her husband. The reader identified Mrs. Mallard as not being a "one-dimensional, clone-like woman having a predictable, adequate emotional response for every life condition." In fact the reader believed that Mrs. Mallard had the exact opposite response to the death her husband because finally, she recognizes the freedom she has desired for a long time and it overcomes her sorrow. "Free! Body and soul free! She kept whispering." We can see that the reader got this idea form this particular phrase in the story because it illuminates the idea of her sorrow tuning to happiness.