Sometimes we all can feel trapped in the day to day monotony of life. In something as simple as an hour that can all change. In The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin a young woman reflects on the information of her husband’s death symbolizing a surprisingly ironic mixture of misery and liberation. The basic idea of this story is the oppression a young woman faces in her marriage. This short but touching story is written about one hour in this young woman’s life, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, where her emotions are far from definite.
The story opens with the fact that Mrs. Mallard has been diagnosed with a heart condition before this story takes place. The heart condition plays a large role in this short story, almost as if it is another character. One would assume that Mrs. Mallard is old because of the preexisting heart problem, but not until the eighth paragraph dose the narrator tell you she is young. This heart condition in a young woman shows the amount of anxiety Mrs. Mallard deals with in everyday life.
A friend of Brently Mallard, Richards is the first to find out about the railroad disaster, so it must be assumed that Richards told Josephine who is Mrs. Mallard’s sister. Both Richards and Josephine went to break the news to Mrs. Mallard. Richards “had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message,” (Chopin 293) which indicates Brently Mallard may not be well liked. The narrator hints about the ending when they surround the word killed with parenthesis, which indicates it had is said but may have not be a fact.
Mrs. Mallard reacts unlike many women do “with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance” (Chopin 293) instead she breaks down immediately in her si...
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...w open window slammed shut. Josephine screamed, showing the reader that Louise has collapsed. Brently Mallard enters the door amazed to find his friend trying to protect him from the sight of his wife’s passing. In the last sentence the doctors represent the undertaker, and the heart disease represents a broken heart due to the loss of her independent life. The irony is very clear “of joy that kills” everyone assumed it was the excitement of seeing her husband that strained her heart, but it was the sudden loss of her new life.
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. 5th Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs, editors. Up Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004. 293-295. Print.
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Story of an Hour.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 23 Sept, 2011.
An important detail is that Mrs. Mallard has a heart disease so Josephine, her sister, has to be very careful telling her the news. Josephine learned of Mr. Mallard’s death
Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Heritage of American Literature. Ed. James E. Miller. Vol. 2. Austin: Harcourt Brace Jovanich, 1991. 487. Print.
To begin with the first display of symbolism in the story is Mrs. Mallard’s heart trouble representing her dissatisfaction with her marriage and unhappiness. Chopin lets the reader know in the beginning that Mrs. Mallard is ill. “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” (57). ...
In conclusion, “The story of an hour” is a clear depiction that women status in the society determines the choices they make about their lives. In this work, Chopin depicts a woman as a lesser being without identity or voices of their own. They are expected to remain in oppressive marriages and submit to their husbands without question.
"The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin, Characters, Setting." Kate Chopin: The Awakening, The Storm, Stories, Biography. The Kate Chopin International Society, 1 Nov. 2010. Web. 13 Dec. 2010. .
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour”. The Seagull Reader: Stories. Ed. Joseph Kelly. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2001. 65 – 67.
Written in 1894, “The Story of an Hour” is a story of a woman who, through the erroneously reported death of her husband, experienced true freedom. Both tragic and ironic, the story deals with the boundaries imposed on women by society in the nineteenth century. The author Kate Chopin, like the character in her story, had first-hand experience with the male-dominated society of that time and had experienced the death of her husband at a young age (Internet). The similarity between Kate Chopin and her heroine can only leave us to wonder how much of this story is fiction and how much is personal experience.
Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Introduction to Literature: Reading, Analyzing, and Writing.2nd ed.
Chopin, Kate. A. “The Story of an Hour.” Baym 1609-1611.
Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Perrine's Literature: Structure Sound & Sense. 11th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2010. 541. Print.
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, ...
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.”
Louise still seated in her room, manufacturing fanciful new possibilities for the future, is disturbed by her sister calling through the keyhole “For heaven’s sake open the door.” Louise still on an extraordinary high of liberation, snaps back to reality, says a prayer for longevity for all to come, and opens the door. She left that room with a new lease on life, a triumph over subjugation and tyranny, “like a goddess of Victory”. Louise stepped down the stairs, no longer a victim, but a free spirt. Then just unexpectedly as Brentley’s death, the door to the house opened; moreover to Louise’s surprise, it is none other than Mr. Mallard himself, alive and well. Apparently not aboard that fateful wreck, standing there, oblivious of any ill begotten news of his demise.