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Freedom in “The Story of an Hour';
Mrs. Mallard’s overwhelming response of “free, free, free!'; upon hearing of her husband’s death reflects the attitude of many nineteenth century women. During this time, highly restrictive gender roles forbade women to live as they saw fit. In “The Story of an Hour'; Kate Chopin allows her audience to envision the moment that Mrs. Mallard is able to shed the bondage of marriage that was forced upon her. This was Mrs. Mallard’s chance to actually live life on her own terms. Not on the terms prescribed to her by her husband. After this revelation on her behalf, the outcome of the story is both ironic and tragic.
Upon hearing the news of Brently’s death Mrs. Mallard, who is afflicted with a heart condition, reacts with sadness at first, grieving with “wild abandonment'; but shortly afterward seeks solitude to assess what has happened. The location where she seeks isolation is important. She retreats to her bedroom in a comfortable armchair, indicating that this is a place where she feels safe. It is here that Mrs. Mallard seems to have found a way to rectify what she thought wrong in her life. Mrs. Mallard then realizes in a rush of emotion and relief that she is “Free! Body and soul free!'; She views the world with a fresh outlook: one where she will be her own person, answering only to herself. For a brief moment the reader is able to see through to how she is truly feeling, her emotional release apparent when she sat “with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair...'; She is overwhelmed with freedom, opening her arms to it, letting it envelope both her body and her soul.
While this realization is occurring, a somewhat strange thing is happening outside. Usually when a character dies, the weather becomes dark, gloomy and foreboding. In this particular story this is not the case. The natural world actually mirrors Mrs. Mallard’s feelings. The “trees were all a quiver with the new spring life'; and “there were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds.'; This shows how she is seeing her life as having a refreshed new appearance. Yes, Mrs. Mallard remembers her husband with kind...
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...ed and composed, unaware of the train wreck and of Mrs. Mallard’s transformation that occurred during his absence. A scream is omitted from Josephine while Richards tries to hide Brently from the truth. The truth that her husband is alive and well, and was miles away from the wreck. Richards was too late though. Mrs. Mallard’s heart has stopped, her life has stopped. She had everything and nothing all in the same moment, which ultimately killed her. Her death, “of the joy that kills,'; is how the author describes Mrs. Mallard’s death, and unwittingly her marriage as well.
Mrs. Mallard’s happiness was in fact, the cause of her death. This death, arrived out of shock that her weak heart could not handle. The arrival of her husband who was the cause of her new-found freedom caused her death. Mrs. Mallard’s death could be seen as the ultimate freedom from her unhappy marriage. Though her life ends in an extremely ironic manner, Mrs. Mallard does in fact finally escape the restrictions of her old life, not merely upon the hour before Brently Mallard’s arrival but in the end for eternity.
One extracurricular activity that I am very passionate about would be the FFA. FFA has taught me so many things and it has brought me so many places. I 've learned how to be a great speaker from different events my advisor has challenged me to do. Public speaking has taken me so many places and I have attributed most of my success to FFA. When I was a freshmen I competed and received gold in the creed speaking competition. As a sophomore, I tried extemporaneous speaking and received a gold for that as well. As a junior I really wanted to challenge myself so I took up agricultural sales as my winter career development experience. I ended up being recognized as the state runner up individual agriculture salesman as well as the 15th best agricultural sales man in the nation. Now as a senior, I have been going around speaking at different school board meetings, advocating
Mrs. Mallard?s freedom did not last but a few moments. Her reaction to the news of the death of her husband was not the way most people would have reacted. We do not know much about Mr. And Mrs. Mallards relationship. We gather from the text that her freedom must have been limited in some way for her to be feeling this way. Years ago women were expected to act a certain way and not to deviate from that. Mrs. Mallard could have been very young when she and Brently were married. She may not have had the opportunity to see the world through a liberated woman?s eyes and she thought now was her chance.
...She had lost her father and her lover while her brother was away for school, and she was no longer useful as a puppet in a greater scheme. Ophelia was displaced, an Elizabethan woman without the men on whom she had been taught to depend. Therein lies the problem - she lacked independence so much that she could not continue living without Polonius, Laertes, and Hamlet. Ophelia's aloneness led to her insanity and death. The form of her death was the only fitting end for her - she drowned in a nearby river, falling beneath the gentle waters. She finally found peace in her mad world. That is how Ophelia is so useful as a classic feminist study - she evokes imagery of the fragile beauty women are expected to become, but shows what happens to women when they submit as such.
Mallard realizes that her husband has died, she realizes that she is free, something which was unusual for women in the mid 1800’s. She said it over and over under her breath: “`free, free, free! `” (151). Her husband’s death represents a new life for Mrs. Mallard. Mark, Cunningham notes, “Mary E. Papke has noted that the reader learns Louise’s first name only after Louise accepts her `new consciousness` of freedom; before that Louise is Mrs. Mallard” (1).
Another example of how Mrs. Mallard was more uplifted than brought down by the news of her husband?s death is the description of the window. As Mrs. Mallard looks out Chopin explains ?she could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all a quiver with new life?. This is telling the reader about the new life that Mrs. Mallard can see in the distance that symbolizes the new life she saw that lay ahead of her now that she was free of her husband. This thought being supported by Hicks in saying "The revalation of freedom occurs in the bedroom"
When reading the text, one can comprehend that Ophelia is caught in the middle between two opposite sides. Her family (father and brother) believe that Hamlet is a womanizer rather then the philosopher that he is. They also believe that he will use her in order to achieve his own purposes, and that he would take her precious virginity only to discard it because he would never be her husband. But, Ophelia's heart mesmerized by Hamlets cunning linguistics is set on the fact that Hamlet truly loves her or loved her, even though he swears he never did. In the eye of her father and brother, she will always be a pure, wholesome girl, an eternal virgin in a sense, (due to a parents nature to always see their offspring as a child) they want her to ascend into her stereotypical role in life as a vessel of morality whose sole purpose of existence is to be a obedient wife and a committed mother. However, to Hamlet she is simply an object used to satisfy and fulfill his sexual needs. He also seems to hold her at a distant which suggests that he may...
Mrs. Mallard was at first overjoyed with freedom because her husband was supposedly “dead,” yet at the end of the story, Mrs. Mallard comes face to face with Mr. Mallard. A whole new wave of emotions overcame Mrs. Mallard as she laid eyes on her husband instantly killing her from “a heart disease-of joy that kills.” It is ironic how Mrs. Mallard is overjoyed about her husband’s death, and she ended up dying because she found out he was alive instead. Her joy literally was killed, killing her on the inside as
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...
"'Free! Body and soul free!'", Mrs. Mallard kept whispering. One person's ultimate freedom may be seen as a tragedy to another. Kate Chopin illustrates this idea in "The Story of an Hour." The story is set in the nineteenth century. Chopin uses the death of Mr. Mallard to show the reader Mrs. Mallard's deep feelings. In the story, Josephine and Mrs. Mallard are sisters. Although the women come from the same background, live in the same city, and outwardly appear to be satisfied with their lives, their attitudes are very different. Chopin uses these two women as foil characters in the story. The differences in the women are seen in their reactions to Mr. Mallard's death. Although both women are expected to maintain a certain role in society, Mrs Mallard, unlike Josephine, is not satisfied with her life due to the societal restrictions. At the end of the story, Josephine and Mrs. Mallard respond very differently to Mr. Mallard's coming home.
Brently was dead, that her sister referred to her as just Louise. She suddenly became a person who has control over her own life rather than her husband controlling her. Initially, Mrs. Mallard felt a “storm of grief,” symbolizing the inward sentiments that were seething through her; in any case, as she sits in her room she watches “patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds,” symbolizing a steady move in her feelings. Mrs. Mallard’s “heart trouble” that is mentioned in the beginning can be a form of symbolism. It can give the reader some sort of foreshadowing of what is to come later on. The ironic ending is where her “heart” condition is mentioned again. When the doctor deliver’s the line “the joy that kills” because he is not aware of Mrs. Mallard’s true disappointment and despise towards the man that she thought was dead. The limitation helps better express the themes of the story because being such a short story requires a limited description of Mrs. Mallard’s surroundings. This makes her life seem truly empty and isolated on the inside. The limited setting better represents her emotional distress that she is experiencing with her
Mrs. Mallard is described as being young and having "a fair, calm face" symbolizing the beauty and innocence of a child. Brently Mallard had repressed her, and now through this seemingly tragic event she is freed of his rule over her and she is able to go on with her life.
Her sister, Josephine, broke the news to her “in broken sentences, veiled hints that revealed in half concealing”. After hearing of her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard locks herself in her room to mourn. She sits in a chair facing an open window and begins to sob. As she sat gazing at an open patch of blue sky, a thought started to come to her. “Free, free, free!” escapes her lips.
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.
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.
The Hope is here, but the way is unclear, all we have to do is wait and we will find the way. We must follow this way offered to us and we will achieve the happiness that we always wanted. In that way, our hope is not wasted.