Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” is about a woman with heart troubles, was informed that her husband has been killed in a railroad accident and after she heared that news she became hysterically upset. She locks herself in a room, sits in a chair looking out the window where what she was seeing outside seemed to be trying to get into her or overwhelm her. She panicked at first, but then began to feel a deep peace with herself after she accepts the fact of her husband’s death. Her sister begs her to come out of the room because she’s worried about her, when she does they go to leave when her husband supposable he was dead came in the door. Turns out he was never dead in the first place, but then ironically after she saw him she dies of heart disease.
There are many things in this story that can be analyzed through the feminist point of view. For example, when Mrs. Mallard was first told of her husband’s death. The author makes a point to say “she did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance.”(25-27) This could be saying or singling women out as people who do not know how to accept important issues or any very important responsibility. He story implies that perhaps men have an ability that they can handle such horrible news or that
Alnemri 2 important of an issue without making a big scene. The reason I am using this example is because that it says “women” in the sentence instead of just saying anyone they singled women out to any others hearing this same news. Now the way Mrs. Mallard herself handled the news of her husband’s death was dramatic , “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment”(35-36) the word abandonment suggests that she needs a man in her ...
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...r’s waist, and together they descended the stairs” her doing that can be her trying wrapping these new-found happiness of her freedom around her sister another woman as if it is trying to encourage her to break free.
Then When her husband who was never really dead came inside, Mrs. Mallard died right there because when she saw her husband, all her freedom vanished right in front of her eyes as he walked in and now that she has seen the freedom that she could have had as free woman and now that she could never go back ever be happy again. “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of the joy that kills” this might means that when men had control over woman, it was like that it was a disease on the women’s heart. After she experienced the happiness of woman’s rights and freedom and the thought of being without that happiness kills her, literally.
“Story of an Hour”, Kate Chopin unveils a widow named Mrs. Louise Mallard in which gets the news of her husband’s death yet, the audience would think she would feel sorrowful, depressed, and dispirited in the outcome her reaction is totally unusual. Meanwhile, day after day as time has gone by Mrs. Mallard slowly comes to a strange realization which alters a new outlook over her husband's death. "And yet she had loved him- sometimes. Often she had not. 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!" (Chopin, 2). The actuality that she finds a slight bit of happiness upon the death of a person who particularly is so close to her is completely unraveling w...
It is rather ironic that she writes that her husband's death in Mrs. Mallard's case gives a sense of new found freedom and that the path that led to a `freedom for Kate' led Kate to write about a certain type of freedom for Mrs. Mallard. In a sense this seems a genesis of what is the path of a woman pursuing feminism without knowing what it is. We can see this when Mrs. Mallard is alone and looking out the window in her room and the text speaks to us.
The protagonist of this drama is Martha Hale. She is a typical rural housewife that has lived in a little town in Dickson County all of her life. She grew up with the alleged murderer and had been to the house several times, but not find evidence to convict here friend of murder. This hometown girl is now felling a new sense of loyalty to her friend, as she remembers the way she was twenty years and as little as one year ago. This new loyalty shows her deep ties to the community and her sex. This loyalty to women follows her throughout the story and shows her ability to look past a situation and tell what is really happening in the lives of others. The men in this story obviously think the women inferior and that allows Mrs. Hale to show not contempt for men, but rather their naiveté toward the true nature and feelings of women. She does this to protect them from things that really do not want to find out about because if they did they would be forced into things that are really not wanted by any, sending a woman whose husband she killed in self defense to her death. This dynamic character goes from an uncomfortable situation in which she really just wants to go home...
The “Story of an hour” is a short story written by Kate Chopin is a very heart tugging story about a woman with heart trouble, Mrs. Mallard. Who had received terrible news about her husband’s passing caused by a train wreck. After receiving such news from Josephine and Richard Mrs. Mallard hurried off to her room to grieve alone, but also to find herself where we see now her feelings have mutated into somewhat of happiness. Ultimately, Mr. Mallard death was fallacy, but it was to late Mrs. Mallard died “of joy that kills”. The short
...environment she was placed in, and to not look for outside influences to help strengthen her, which was an indication of his insecurity. She accepted the environment that she was placed in but begin to slowly change it into what she wanted. Even though her husband really believed that he was helping her, he was actually hurting her. He was stuck in society's thinking that woman wanted to be taken care of and thought that, that's what he was doing. He could not understand why she began to react violently and angrily to the environment in which she was placed. Only by confronting her fears of what society and her husband would think about her, did she allow herself to become free. Once she achieved her independence, she realized that she didn't need to rely on anyone else but herself for her survival. By refusing to be submissive, she traded her sanity for independence.
The deep and ironic meaning that are portrayed within this writing can be seen as many different things. Berkove believes the deep and ironic meaning to the story is that “Louise Mallard is an immature egotist and a victim of her own self-assertion.” Although this is what Berkove thinks it is unclear to anyone besides the author what the true meaning behind the story is. It is not until recently that the interpretation of the story has a feminist movement background to it as light is shed on the way marriages were constructed and managed during the Victorian
3. My age and social economic status does limit my perspective on this story from lack of many experiences, but I do relate to loss and shock from one particularly challenging incident in my life about three years ago. It messed with my mind more than my heart. Throughout the entire story it seemed that the main character, Ms. Mallard, had not been emotionally present. Her husband’s death and reappearance was clearly a trigger to whatever hidden feelings that she had manifested in her shocking death related to their time spent together. As a young male, I find that true feelings are really hard to display in a society that expects you to behave a specific way under certain unwritten codes. Living in a modern world where women with economic
Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour, was written in 1891, a time when married women were essentially the property of their husbands. Women were considered inferior to their husbands. All they were good for for was cooking, cleaning, and caring for their children. Thier opinions and desires often went unheard. The Story of an Hour is centered on a woman, Mrs. Mallard, who has just received the news that her husband was killed in a trainwreck. Mrs. Mallard reacts in the same way any woman would, in fact she is so consumed with grief that she retreats to her upstairs bedroom. However, she soon realizes that her husband’s death opened up a pathway for her to live her own life, without the restraints that came with marriage in the late 1700’s. Mrs. Mallard returns to the entryway of her house to find her supposedly deceased unlatching the front door, causing Mrs. Mallard to mysteriously pass away. The doctors said she died of “a joy that kills”. Chopin implements literary and structural elements such as metaphors, foreshadowing, and dramatic irony to highlight the theme of freedom and enhance the drama
As the title puts it, “The Story of an Hour” takes place in the span of an hour. The title of the story also shows the possibility of occurrences within a single hour. This story is mostly centered around one woman, Louis Mallard. In conventional circumstances, death brings sorrow, grief, seclusion, guilt, regrets, along with other feeling depending on the cause of death. In “The Story of an Hour”, sorrow and grief are a product of the recent happenings, however, these feelings are coupled with joy and independence. Kate Chopin uses this story to convey death as a joyful circumstance whereas conventionally it is portrayed as sorrowful.
When a marriage that has been together for a long period of time is broken, there are certain things that are seen to hold true in most of these cases. There is a renewed sense of individuality that grasps this person's life after the initial trauma of a significant other being absent. In Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour", this situation is presented as the characterization of Mrs. Mallard, whose husband has been pronounced dead, is displayed. She goes through three seperate stages in her personal grieving process. Chopin is attempting to show readers that although sadness is the initial reaction to this circumstance, Mrs. Mallard's sense of freedom brings her joy, but it is unfathomable for her to go back to the way that she used to live after she sees that her husband is still alive resulting in her death.
Kate Chopin wrote a short piece called “The Story of an Hour” about a woman’s dynamic emotional shift who believes she has just learned her husband has died. The theme of Chopin’s piece is essentially a longing for more freedom for women.
She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over...
Kate Chopin’s short story, “The Story of an Hour”, is about a woman, named Louise Mallard, in the late 1800s who is told that her husband, Brently, has died in a railroad accident. Initially, Louise is surprised, distressed, and drowned in sorrow. After mourning the loss, the woman realizes that she is finally free and independent, and that the only person she has to live for is herself. She becomes overwhelmed with joy about her new discovery of freedom, and dreams of all of the wonderful events in life that lie ahead of her. Louise’s sister finally convinces her to leave her room and come back into reality. While Louise is walking down her steps, her husband surprisingly enters through the door because he was actually not killed in the accident. At the same moment, Louise collapses and dies, supposedly from “heart disease-of joy that kills” (Chopin 706).
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
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...