Negative View Of Marriage In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

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“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin represents a negative view of marriage by presenting the reader with a woman who is clearly overjoyed that her husband has died. This is expressed through the language in “The Story of an Hour” (click for full plot summary) by Kate Chopin used to describe Louise’s emotions as she oscillates between numbness and extreme joy at her newfound freedom. The narrator of “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin relates what she observes in simple prose, but when her emotions are described, the words are vibrant and powerful. This suggests that Louis has a deep inner-life that is not connected to the outside world of her husband or friends and the fact that she cloisters herself in her room to discover her feelings …show more content…

This stands in sharp contrast to the sections in which she seems indifferent or emotionally unattached. For instance, in the above citation which begins with the very simple statement in one of the quotes from “Story of an Hour”, “And yet she loved him—sometimes. Often she did not” which demonstrates emotional passivity, but as the short paragraph continues and her true emotions come to the forefront, the language comes alive along with her character. The clipped line above is followed by, “What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!” It is important to notice not only the language comes to life with the use of words like “mystery,” “possession,” and “impulse” but the very phrasing changing. The initial emotions portrayed in these quotes from “The Story of an Hour” (click for full plot summary) by Kate Chopin in which she was passive about are short tidy sentences, but as soon as she begins to feel an emotion, the sentences expand and the whole of one massive thought about “her being” becomes one very long sentence to stand in contrast to the previous

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