As Louise contemplates the fact of Brently Mallard's death, however, her grief gives way to a far more powerful feeling—a feeling of joy in her own freedom. Louise realizes that she will feel sad when she sees Brently's "kind, tender hands folded in death," but she also realizes that for the first time in years she actually wants to live. While Louise is intoxicated with this newfound joy, Josephine, who fears that Louise might harm herself in her anguish over Brently's death, implores her to leave the locked room and come downstairs. As the two women descend the staircase, Brently Mallard walks in the front door. Chopin comments, "he had been far from the scene of accident, and did not even know there had been one." Upon seeing her husband, Louise suffers a heart attack and dies. This simple surface action belies the complexities of the prose style.
The first sentence of "The Story of an Hour" reads: "Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death." If we approach this sentence merely as factual communique, we might say that it conveys three messages: Mrs. Mallard suffers from a heart trouble; Mrs. Mallard's husband has died; someone has taken great care to inform Mrs. Mallard of her husband's death. If, however, we analyze the way in which we proceed through the sentence, we discover a more complex layer of meaning. The first word of the sentence, knowing, introduces a participial phrase. A reader expects, and grammatical usage requires, that a primary position participle modify the subject of the subsequent independent clause. Chopin violates our expectations. As we move through the participial phrase and into the indep...
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...s. If we review the story as a whole, we realize that the disquieting effect of the first sentence is heightened as we confront instances of agent disjunction and pronominalization, ambiguity, and diminution. Our positive feelings about Louise's self-assertion are qualified word by word. Although Louise struggles with a few moments of fearful anticipation, her progression toward self-assertion is predicated on "news" and "veiled hints," and she gives herself up to an undefined "something" without stopping to ask if it is or is not a "monstrous joy." As much as we would like to follow her, the route is closed to us. The cumulative experience of the text does not allow such simple complicity.
Works Cited
Madonne M. Miner, "Veiled Hints: An Affective Stylist's Reading of Kate Chopin's 'Story of an Hour'," in The Markham Review, Vol 11, Winter, 1982, pp 29-32
Long, Robert Emmet, “Kate Chopin.” Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-7. Literary reference Center Plus. Web. 19 April 2014.
Berkove also says the story is not at all about marriage, but about Louise. The story is missing evidence of where the husband is supposal living for his wife. All these examples support the fact thesis of Louise is self-absorbed.
Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Heritage of American Literature. Ed. James E. Miller. Vol. 2. Austin: Harcourt Brace Jovanich, 1991. 487. Print.
...new freedom?] Her “moment of illumination” (the true light) signifies her soul is now saved. She even breathes a “quick prayer” (13), which is symbolic of her quest for a divine intervention and repentance[.] (s[S]he is totally and completely engulfed with the presence of God). [No, what was she praying for? A long (not eternal) life.] One of Mrs. Mallard’s last actions is to rise (resurrection action) “at length and [open] the door” (the gateway to her salvation). In addition, the author provides the reader with the words “joy that kills” (13), the joy is symbolic of her freedom and “that kills” is symbolic of her eternal life. [CS -1] [Why would "that kills" be symbolic of "eternal life"?] These words provide the reader with an understanding that a human being must experience death to receive eternal life. Louise has found her freedom through eternal life.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. DiYanni Robert. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. 38-41. Print.
Unfortunately, her hope for long years and many beautiful spring days was abruptly ended in an ironic twist. Unbeknownst to herself and her company, Mr. Mallard had survived, and within an hour the promises of a bright future for Mrs. Mallard had both began and came to an end. Her grievous death was misconstrued as joy to the others: "they said she had died of heart disease-of joy that kills" (Chopin 471). This statement embodies the distorted misconception that a woman lives only for her man. The audience, in fact, sees just the opposite. To Louise her life was elongated at the news of her husband's death, not cut short. Throughout the story, one hopes Louise will gain her freedom. Ironically, she is granted freedom, but only in death.
Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Introduction to Literature: Reading, Analyzing, and Writing.2nd ed.
Louise is trapped in her marriage. The lines of her face "bespoke repression" (paragraph 8). When Louise acknowledges that her husband is dead, she knows that there will "be no powerful will bending her" (paragraph 14). There will be no husband who believes he has the "right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature" (paragraph 14). Louise knows that her husband loved her. Brently had only ever looked at Louise with love (paragraph 13). This tells the reader that Brently is not a horrible ma...
Louise has turned into a little girl that must depend on man to take care of her. Louise pleads with Brently to go to the gardens of Paris. She begs like a child begging for something that is impossible to give. Brently must lock her up in their home to protect her from her curiosity and need to see the world. The filmmakers do not give her the commonsense to realize the dangers she would face in seeing Paris and all the other places she would like to visit. Louise remains the little girl in the flashbacks and Brently has replaced her dead father as the soul keeper of her world. Brently must protect her from the world and herself. She is made to be completely dependent on him from her everyday needs to being her only window into the outside world. There are no female positions of authority in her life. Aunt Joe is left in the background and Marjorie must ultimately answer to Brently. Louise is left to see men as the only authority in her life. She herself as a woman must feel powerless to the will of men. Brently even chooses the destinations of their daily visits to far off and exotic places. These excursions are Louise's only escape. Brently is made to be her captor and savior at the same time. Her fate is completely dependent in his yet she is given no control of either.
Chopin describes her as a fragile woman. Because she was “afflicted with a heart trouble,” when she receives notification of her husband’s passing, “great care was taken” to break the news “as gently as possible” (1). Josephine, her sister, and Richards, her husband’s friend, expect her to be devastated over this news, and they fear that the depression could kill her because of her weak heart. Richards was “in the newspaper office when the intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of killed” (1). He therefore is one of the first people to know about his death. Knowing about Mrs. Mallard’s heart, he realizes that they need to take caution in letting Mrs. Mallard know about it. Josephine told her because Richards feared “any less careful, less tender” person relaying the message to Louise Mallard (1). Because of her heart trouble, they think that if the message of her husband’s death is delivered to her the wrong way, her heart would not be able to withstand it. They also think that if someone practices caution in giving her the message, that, ...
Upon seeing her husband alive and well Louise realizes that the life she has imagined is not to be. The return of Brently signals a return of the patriarchal oppression in her life, and after imagining herself as an individual and then to be denied the chance to live freely is a punishment far worse than the crime. Louise loses her identity and once again becomes "his wife." Richards once more tries to protect her, a helpless woman, by attempting to block her view from her husband, because of the fragile state of her heart. Mrs. Mallard's strengths are gone, never to be acknowledged by the men in her life. For one, brief hour she was an individual. Now she finds herself bound by masculine oppression with no end in sight, and the result is death.
Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. 4th ed. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: St. Martins, 1997. 12-15.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 3rd ed. New York: Pearson, 2010. 261-263. Print.
Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour is a brilliant short story of irony and emotion. The story demonstrates conflicts that take us through the character’s emotions as she finds out about the death of her husband. Without the well written series of conflicts and events this story, the reader would not understand the depth of Mrs. Mallard’s inner conflict and the resolution at the end of the story. The conflict allows us to follow the emotions and unfold the irony of the situation in “The Story of an Hour.”
Initially, a short story begins with an exposition. This is the laying out of important background information, characters, and setting. Chopin’s story is only a few short paragraphs in length, so her exposition is almost overlooked. However, she does provide one detail that is essential to appreciating Mrs. Mallard. Louise is described as needing “great care”(Chopin, 293) because of her distressing “heart trouble” (Chopin, 293). This information is crucial to “The Story of an Hour” and essentially can be considered the exposition. Mrs. Mallard’s condition reoccurs in the resolution of the story, adding to its importance. Additionally, the only other piece of information that can be revealed in Chopin’s exposition is the significance that every sentence must contain vitality. The “dense structure” (SparkNotes) parallels the intensity presented in the short hour of Louise’s life. Although short, this story’s exposition does reveal information that the reader needs to understand.