Thematic Analysis Of A Short Story: Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

A Thematic Analysis of a Short Story: Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour

In Kate Chopin’s, “The Story of an Hour,” the author draws from the feminist thought of her time, to formulate a story reflective of the desire of many late nineteenth and early twentieth century married women, for freedom and independence. During this time women were still looked upon as being inferior to men and dependent on their husbands. A wife 's primary responsibility was cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children, while their husbands were the soul income earners. The author, speaking through the narrator, explicitly presents the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard’s desire to be more. The driving theme of the story presents the idea of romantic love, which during this time for most women came with an expectation of marriage and children soon after, as being quite oppressive. Chopin uses symbols through out her work to push the narrative of the absence of romantic love (the husband in

The narrator begins by first informing the reader that Mrs. Mallard has a “heart problem.” I believe that this usage was intended to be both symbolic and literal. The heart, in most modern cultures, is a universal symbol for love. The mentioning of it, is the author Chopin’s way of telling us that Ms. Mallard has a problem with love, as well as sets the stage for the story’s ending irony. She is a young married woman, with a husband that she recognizes loved her and treated her well. This is understood by her thoughts revealed by the narrator, “she knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her” (Chopin, Kate). Despite having this type of love, a typical love, she was unhappy. Mrs. Mallard felt that this type of love was oppressive. It meant giving up, and never discovering, too much of herself, the author