STORY OF AN HOUR The story tells the tragedy of a woman and her relief after going through her husband death. By little info, but great detail the story shows how Mrs. Mallard live her life together with her husband. The story was written in 1894, a time when women didn't have the same rights as today. The author view toward marriage shows that love can be a beautiful thing, but there is always that attachment and we can’t do much about it. We can’t be ourselves all the time more specifically we are not free to do the things that we would love to do because of commitment. In Mrs. Mallard case is more like she is imprison in her house. She is bound to her husband, which surely is the one controlling her actions or deterring her from doing activities that she would like to do. Back in the day men had more opportunities than women. They could work, receive more appropriate education while women were …show more content…
Mallard shut herself in her room. While in her room, mourning her supposedly dead husband she goes through a mixture of emotions. She feels sad because of her deceased husband, then its a felling of dread that something is coming her freedom. After realizing this and accepting it she becomes full of joy, and now the thoughts of her dead husband are gone and replace for what is coming ahead. The author convey how no attachment to someone else is how we truly feel liberated and that bring us joy. In today’s time this kind of situation are less likely to happen. People now can get married and get divorce in no time. In those times arrange marriages were the norm something that doesn't exist anymore thank God. Even in our time people that get married because they love each other they end up braking up. This goes back to what the author was referring to and that is that people are not the same once they are attach. The sense of freedom is taken and now freedom is a right to everyone unlike back in those
Mrs. Mallard's confusion begins by her first feeling "sudden, wild abandonment, " but then a short while after begins to have strange feelings of relief.
The story is very short, but every word has import in the story and each line has great depth of meaning. It is possible to infer a great deal about the woman's life, even though we are given very little on the surface. A telegraph and a railroad are mentioned in the first paragraph, so there is some idea of the time the story takes place. We are also given her married name and the full name of her husband. The fact that she is referred to only as "Mrs. Mallard", while her husband's full name is given, coupled with what we learn on the second page, gives some indication of the repression she's had to suffer through and the indignity society placed on woman in those times. We also learn in the first paragraph that she lives in a man's world, for, though it is her sister that tells her the news, it is her husband's friend who rushes over with the story. Even after his death, she is confined to the structures she adopted with married life, including the close friend's of her husband.
... Mallard opens the door very much alive. After it is all said and done, it seems like her body gives her what her mind wants the most: freedom.
In conclusion, it was no surprise when Mrs. Mallard is shocked when her husband is standing at their front door. He had missed his train; therefore, sparing his life. When she is making her symbolic descent down the stairs, she spots her husband and realizes that she can never reverse her progress. The “joy” that kills her is the joy that she refuses to surrender, but for one hour she gets glimpse of what true joy is (Jamil 219).
The story begins on a very sad note especially in the eyes of a reader. Mrs. Mallard is said to have a “heart
A common feeling when a spouse loses his or her significant other is devastation like Mrs. Mallard initially felt when “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment,” but then she began to feel free (Chopin 236). She expresses her feelings for freedom by repeating the word “Free! Body and soul free!” (237). She was exalting with glee as she came to more of a realization that her husband’s death meant “she would live for herself;” however, right after her celebration, her husband walked in the front door (237). This shocked Mrs. Mallard to the point of death, ending her emotional breakdown.
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...
Women rights were extremely limited in may ways. Once they were married, their husband held all of their freedom. This story describes one case, Mrs. Mallard, and her experiences with hearing the news of a tragic accident which resulted in leaving her husband dead. She is overjoyed, because she knows she will be free. She will not have to live under him. Mrs. Mallard will finally get the chance to live her own life along with inheriting his goods. Knowing the rights women had and did not have in late 1800s ties together the reality of this short story.
She would not have grieved over someone she did not love. Even in the heat of her passion, she thinks about her lost love. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked safe with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. Her love may not have been the greatest love of all time, but it was still love. Marriage was not kind to Mrs. Mallard, her life was dull and not worth living, her face showed the years of repression.
Mallard’s emotions over the presumed death of her husband. The author used both dramatic and situational irony to mislead the reader and surprise them with a plot twist ending. By utilizing both external and internal conflict the author expresses the internal debate of Mrs. Mallard’s true feelings and those of the people around her. The author used symbolism to display Mrs. Mallard’s desire for freedom from her marriage. In the end it was not joy that killed Mrs. Mallard but the realization that she lost her
In the story, after Mrs. Mallard locks herself in her room after hearing the devastating news about her husband, she starts thinking on the bright side of her situation, she sits down, and Mrs. Mallard begins to appear as a stronger woman which is where the feminist theory takes effect. She looks out of the house through the large open window which could also signify the open opportunities available to her now. She begins to see how her marriage made her into a lesser person. She realizes that she has been living her life through limitations caused from being married. Mrs. Mallard knows that she can begin
Mrs. Mallard’s "brief moment of illumination" is a very deep and touching story about a lady who is forced to be married to a man she did not really know and did not love deeply with all her heart, as if she is bound with unhappiness for life! Now she has been liberated. The narrator portrays that was feeling a kind of freedom that she could not describe, but does not know how to deal with it. In this essay matters such as this freedom she was feeling, the little love she had for her husband, the "monstrous joy" she was feeling will be discussed. Matters such as women’s issues and their feelings towards life and death are also included in this essay. These matters are all part of Mrs. Mallard’s "brief moment of illumination".
Mrs. Mallard’s repressed married life is a secret that she keeps to herself. She is not open and honest with her sister Josephine who has shown nothing but concern. This is clearly evident in the great care that her sister and husband’s friend Richard show to break the news of her husband’s tragic death as gently as they can. They think that she is so much in love with him that hearing the news of his death would aggravate her poor heart condition and lead to death. Little do they know that she did not love him dearly at all and in fact took the news in a very positive way, opening her arms to welcome a new life without her husband. This can be seen in the fact that when she storms into her room and her focus shifts drastically from that of her husband’s death to nature that is symbolic of new life and possibilities awaiting her. Her senses came to life; they come alive to the beauty in the nature. Her eyes could reach the vastness of the sky; she could smell the delicious breath of rain in the air; and ears became attentive to a song f...
The story takes place in the late nineteenth century, a time when women had very limited rights. Mrs. Mallard, a young woman who has a bad heart, plays the main character in this story. She receives news that her husband has been killed in a railroad accident. Mrs. Mallard is shocked and bewildered by the death of her husband. However, the feeling of bewilderment is only a temporary feeling that quickly leads to an overwhelming sense of freedom. A freedom she has desperately longed for. Yet, shortly after receiving the news of her husbands death there is a knock at the door. Upon opening the door, she discovers that her husband is not dead, for he is standing in the doorway alive and well. Mr. Mallard’s appearance causes his wife to die. “[T]he doctors … said she [has] died of heart disease – of jo...
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.