Transformation Of The Open Window In The Hour By Kate Chopin

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Upon coming to the realization that her husband did not die in a tragic railroad incident as she was told by her sister Josephine and her husband’s friend Richards, in the most delicate manner due to her heart troubles, Mrs. Mallard dies suffering from a heart attack. The doctors claim that the cause of her heart attack was from a “joy that kills”(Chopin, Page 3). Throughout this short story, the author Kate Chopin, focuses on visualizing the emotions and the role that the women of the 19th century had as wives. And so, Kate Chopin shows the role of women and what is expected of them by telling a story of a woman who experiences an emotional transformation as soon as she finds out she is a widow. The emotional transformation that Mrs. Mallard …show more content…

Looking through the lens of the open window, Mrs. Louise Mallard was able to use the open window to metaphorically represent the life and happiness she longed for throughout her marriage. For this reason, Mrs. Louise Mallard narrates, “ And yet she had loved him-sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter!What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this new possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!”(Chopin, Page 2) Evidently, it is her knowing that above everything what she wanted more than anything is to be her own person. Thus the open window brings a fresh new start to life for her. It is what takes away her fear at the very beginning of the story, of her life changing. The open window evolves to serve as a long life which, in the beginning of the story, the thought of having a long life would bring fear. The more she looked out, the more she realized that life is good. Therefore, the moment Mrs. Mallard does turn away from the open window and leaves the room she was in, her new revelation that her husband is alive, that all of her endless possibilities were shattered and that her independence was short-lived makes her die out of disappointment. Ironically enough, instead of being the one to survive, she is the one that is dying, suffering from a tragic heart attack just as the beginning of the story

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