Shelby Dukes Comprehensive Exercise 3 1. The Story of an Hour by Kate Chapin offers a very interesting and complex plot. The readers first meet Mrs. Mallard as she is being presented with the news of her husband’s death. They must be careful giving her this news as she has heart trouble. Her reaction was one of shock and dismay. The readers follow her through her thoughts of days gone by and of the bright future she foresees for herself. 2. Mrs. Mallard as the protagonist in The Story of an Hour, is physically weak with a heart condition, but emotionally strong from years of a restricted life. She is mourning the loss of her husband, but seems to quietly celebrate the beginning of her life. “But she saw beyond that bitter momenta long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely,” describes her unusual feelings toward Brently’s death. She will not go quietly into the night as readers note when she utters, “Free! Body and soul free” (paragraph 16). Readers view Louise Mallard as more of a dynamic personality when they read, “Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her.” Since Brently died in the spring, she was thinking of all the spring and summer days ahead. 3. The theme of “The Story of an Hour” is split into two parts. The first theme is the death of Brently Mallard and the freedom it will give to Louise. The reaction they get, “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment….,” (3) was an expected one. When Mrs. Mallard goes to her room alone, she begins to imagine her new life without restrictions. She realizes, “There would be no one to live for during those coming years;” (14), but “she said it over and over under her breath: “free, free, free!” (11) Showing her joy at finally being able ... ... middle of paper ... ...a new life that Mrs. Mallard feels. The other characters although not discussed very much are shown in a caring delicate light. Her sister held Louise when “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment…” (4). This leads the reader to not knowing whether it is out of grief or if it is a cry of relief. 7. Two important quotes from the story are: “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself.” (14) This quote explains the sadness she feels for the loss of her husband, but the realization that after years of confinement in her marriage, she will finally have a chance at a life. “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills.” (23) This quote speaks to the irony of how fleeting life is. One minute she felt dead and the next she felt alive only to have life stolen from her yet again.
... seeing and feeling it’s renewed sense of spring due to all the work she has done, she was not renewed, there she lies died and reader’s find the child basking in her last act of domestication. “Look, Mommy is sleeping, said the boy. She’s tired from doing all out things again. He dawdled in a stream of the last sun for that day and watched his father roll tenderly back her eyelids, lay his ear softly to her breast, test the delicate bones of her wrist. The father put down his face into her fresh-washed hair” (Meyer 43). They both choose death for the life style that they could no longer endure. They both could not look forward to another day leading the life they did not desire and felt that they could not change. The duration of their lifestyles was so pain-staking long and routine they could only seek the option death for their ultimate change of lifestyle.
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 ...
a voice as they do today. For Mrs. Mallard in "Story of an Hour", it seems that it may be better to die, then to live in chains. For Mrs. Ames on the other hand, she found the man that a woman needs to connect with her physically to be happy.
In "the story of an hour" Chopin discuss how getting married can lead you to live a life of anguish. In the beginning of the short story Mrs. Mallard revives terrible news that her husband has been recently killed, she "Wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment." This intense reaction is how society would expect her to act if your husband dies. Mrs. Mallard then goes into her bedroom to grieve alone: "She could see in the open square before her house the tops of the trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life." Seeing the open square makes her crave freedom, something she doesn't remembering having. The new spring life will eventually represent her new-found freedom and happiness. As she stares outside the window she thinks, but "It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought." She is critically thinking of what will come and what has just happened, she has not ever has to think for herself, her husband always did that for her. This is the first time her feelings start to stir, she tries to process the information more to figure out what they mean.
Like in many tragically true stories, it would seem Mrs. Mallard 's freedom came too late. Kate Chopin’s, “The Story of an Hour” begins by introducing Mrs. Mallard as a person afflicted with heart trouble. The story builds on this by having Mrs. Mallard’s sister Josephine and her husband Richard explain the situation in a very sensitive manner. Their efforts would prove to be in vain however as Mrs. Mallard then proceeds to emotionally break down. The news shocks Mrs. Mallard to her very core and has her at odds with how she should feel now that all was said and done. After coming to terms with her situation, fate delivers its final blow in a cruel and deceitful ploy towards Mrs. Mallards. And with that, Mrs. Mallard 's dies. In her hour of change Mrs. Mallard 's was delicate, thoughtful and excitable.
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.
She has now found a new desire for life. However, without warning, the tone abruptly reverts back to its grief stricken “ horror.” As Mr. Mallard walks in the door, her thoughts, dreams, and aspirations, quickly fade away. Louise’s heart, so weak, simply stops and all bliss transfers into extreme heartache. The drastic changes of tone reveals that freedom can be given and taken from someone in a heartbeat and the heartache will always remain.
Kate Chopin's story, "The Story of an Hour", focuses on an 1890's young woman, Louise Mallard. She experienced a profound emotional change after she hears her husband's "death" and her life ends with her tragic discovery that he is actually alive. In this story, the author uses various techniques-settings, symbolism and irony- to demonstrate and develop the theme: Freedom is more important than love.
...r passing. The abundance of literary devices highlights Mrs. Mallard emotions when she was finally given the freedom she had been longing for throughout her entire life. In the end, the nineteenth century male-dominated society reigns supreme once again, and “when Louise ceases to exist in relation to the patriarchal society around her, she ceases to exist at all” (Cunningham 53).
As she waited, she felt it coming, but didn’t know what it was. She tried to get up, but wasn’t able to. Then she realized that she was “free, free, free!” Mrs. Mallard was in fear, but then became joyous. “She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death,” (Chopin, 1894, para. 13).
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of An Hour” focuses on a woman named Louise Mallard and her reaction to finding out about her husband’s death. The descriptions that the author uses in the story have significance in the plot because they foreshadow the ending.
There are many stories with twists and turns, and you never truly know what happens until you live it yourself. One story that has a twist in the plot is The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin. The story is about a lady whose husband is believed to be dead; but, in all actuality he is not. In addition, she is happy that he is dead until she finds out that he is alive. The theme is how she gave up on life until she heard the death of her husband, she then had her life to look forward to until she finds out he is alive and it shock her so much and she died.
...egaining her husband and all of the loss of freedom her marriage entails. The line establishes that Louise's heart condition is more of a metaphor for her emotional state than a medical reality.” (Koloski) It is ironic that she accepts the death of her husband and is joyous and free, and then he ends up being alive after she walks out of the room with a sense of power. The ending of The Story of an hour by Kate Chopin implies that maybe the only true resolution of conflict is in death.
Key Elements:The story of an hour · Plot: Standard plot. A woman who receive the notice of her husband's death, and when she begins to felt freedom her husband appear again and she can't accept it and fall died. · Characterization: Few characters a. Mrs. Mallard or Louise: Mallard's wife. Was afflicted with hearth trouble.
The main theme in “The Story of an Hour” is a woman’s freedom from oppression. Mrs. Mallard does not react accordingly to the news of her husband’s death; in the third paragraph it states, “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment.” After her initial wave of shock and sadness has passed, however, she becomes elated with the thought of finally being free of her husband. Originally, she is described as being “pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body” and having lines that “bespoke repression”; in an attempt to be a perfect wife to a man whom she did not even love, Mrs. Mallard has been masking her true self. Once she realizes that she has finally gained the freedom that she has been longing for, Mrs. Mallard begins to