Story Of An Hour Literary Analysis

Kate Chopin was one of the most impactful, provocative literary feminists during the late 1800’s. She started off as a “local colorist” focusing on depicting an accurate image of central Louisiana’s geography and culture (Kiszner and Mandell 204). Despite starting off with a conservative topic of literary focus, she eventually began to tamper with subjects of sexuality to challenge the patriarchal oppression caused by the Napoleonic Code ruling over the state of Louisiana. One of her less sexualized work, “The Story of an Hour”, depicts a young woman, Louise Mallard, feeling a sense of exhilaration and liberation, as the result of being informed of her husband’s death. Nevertheless, everything that goes up must come down. Overjoyed with a new

The audience discovers the protagonist’s first name, only after being informed the news of her husband’s death. This event results in a sensation restoring Louise’s individuality. Albeit many Native Americans believe upcoming rainstorms to be nourishment and rejuvenation for the land, literature often indicates rain and clouds as symbols of serious trouble and disappointment ahead for the main character. Mrs. Mallard embraces the upcoming storm as an indication of cleansing her past; however, that is not the case. Instead, the approaching storm indicates washing her existence from the face of the earth, as well as any hope of freedom she possesses at the time of her “brief moment of illumination” (Chopin 206). At the end of the short story, her husband, Brently Mallard, foreshadowing her sudden death, enters the house carrying an umbrella, another sign suggesting to rainfall, incurs immediately as he walks through the doorway (Chopin 206). Rainfall is one of numerous symbolic, literary elements possessing multiple meanings, depending on where the folklore

The audience in today’s society would correlate west only as where the sun sets at the end of the day, with little significance. Based on their belief of the Sun god, Native Americans believed that the west signifies end or conclusion of the day. Their Sun god would have a cycle of rising in the morning from the east and resting in the west at night. However Greek mythology heavily believes the west as being the direction of death. For example, Odysseus reaches the House of Hades, ruler of the Underworld, by traveling as far west as possible on the flat earth. In a similar way, Chopin details the wife solely entranced with the scattered bits of blue sky, while ignoring the clouds piling on top of each other in the west from the window right in front her, as she sits in a chair, grieving her husband’s death (Chopin 205). Initially, the reader can interpret the west to represent the end of her enslavement to the wants and needs of society, which is true, but the deeper meaning hidden is in the clever use of foreshadowing of her