One can image the struggles women went through during the nineteenth-century having no better option than to be married, widowed, or worse. As a result, Kate Chopin’s theme in “The Story of an hour” in the book Backpack Literature: An Introduction of Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing might have expressed one of many aspects that women struggled with during that time in an alternating, omniscient point of view. To put it lightly, marriage being one of those struggles in the story makes us think if marriage is not for everyone. Through the author’s diction, it will be clear that Mrs. Louise Mallard being the main character struggles with the antagonist, which is the institution of marriage, and she has a realization that she might have defeated the enemy and freed herself, but the institution being there in the end kills the protagonist.
Knowing that Louise had a heart condition and then finding out her husband is dead. Chopin symbolism of how Louise felt was “When the storm of grief had spent itself, she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her” (Chopin 169). Hence, this shows her comfort in confined areas to relax her troubled heart, yet she did not want to go to see her husband and mourn his death. As well as, the death of her husband was not enough to kill her from a broken heart because of her condition. Finally, Louise not wanting companionship in her room shows that what she strives for has not been found in its entirety.
The turning point to her real feelings about her being married has come to realization. This overwhelming feeling came over Louise, and the author wrote, “She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with h...
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...ense of freedom. The grief of her husband’s death is gone. At this point, she is done and wants to press on to this new strong view of life after marriage.
All though the diction in the end implies the doctor believes she died from joy of seeing her husband alive, which was too much for her heart, yet all the eloquence that the narrator expressed through the protagonist implies that she died from the reintroduction of marriage's confinements when she found her husband still lived. This situational irony gives the reader an idea that it could be from the joy of a union, but that it is not always what it seems. The Louise Mallard was a dynamic and round character; she transforms throughout the story emotionally, yet in the end her change was permanent. Although she might have gotten that freedom from her confinements but maybe not the way, she wanted her freedom.
She whispers, “Free! Body and soul free!” (Chopin). Though her situation is sad, she does not have a remorseful response. She locks herself in her room and reflects upon her new reality. She instead comes to find a form of liberation for herself from her husband’s death. As she looks out the window, Chopin writes, “…she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window,” (Chopin). Chopin is stating Louie’s newly found greatness for her life. She is now able to live for herself and not behind her husband as society has told her. She can be different and gain more from her life now because she does not have to follow or live for a man, as many woman did in society. She feels exonerated from her bondage, which is marriage, and she now feels she can have a life for herself. In the end, her husband is actually found to be alive as he walks into the room. Chopin writes, “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills,” (Chopin). From seeing her husband, Louise dies. It was joy that had killed her. Readers can easily believe that she died because of the shock that her husband was still alive, but in reality she died from the loss of her new found greatness. The joy that killed her was her own
This was her first response to the news of his death. She would not had grieved over someone she did not love. Even in the heat of her passion she thinks about her lost love.
Louise is trapped in her marriage. The lines of her face "bespoke repression" (paragraph 8). When Louise acknowledges that her husband is dead, she knows that there will "be no powerful will bending her" (paragraph 14). There will be no husband who believes he has the "right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature" (paragraph 14). Louise knows that her husband loved her. Brently had only ever looked at Louise with love (paragraph 13). This tells the reader that Brently is not a horrible ma...
Chopin sets the story in the springtime to represent a time of new life and rebirth, which mirrors Louise's discovery of her freedom. Louise immediately takes herself to a room where, "facing the window [sat] a comfortable, roomy armchair" (Chopin 470). The news of her husband's death leaves her feeling lost and confused, seeking answers about her future. In her husband's lifetime, she was "pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach to her soul," but once left alone to gaze out of the open window and to observe the "patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds," she recognizes freedom for the first time (Chopin 470). Initially, she fails to fully comprehend the mysterious yet promising beginning to her new life, but soon welcomes it as, "she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window" (Chopin 471). Getting a glimpse of her life with an absolute and fresh freedom gives her the strength to abandon a life of solitude and to "spread her arms out [. . .] in welcome" (Chopin 471). Just as springtime is a fresh beginning to a new year, Louise's discovery of sovereignty is a hopeful promise to a new life.
As Mrs. Mallard lets her realization take root she begins to chant, “free, free, free” (Chopin, 75). This shows that she accepts her new fate and knows that she will be okay without her husband. Louise becomes aware that she has been dictated by social expectation and requirement, but now can live for herself once again with no one to answer to. Louise admits, “she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death” (Chopin, 75), but sees her future beyond that now. Social expectations no longer obligate her to be the woman she was. Louise is now able to do what she feels is most beneficial for her as an individual, and not what would be expected in her monogamous
While Chopin's employment of irony presents a socially unaccepted concept in a more acceptable format, it is the author's use of perspective that increases the impact of her message. Chopin's point might be lost, perhaps entirely, if the reader were not informed from Louise's viewpoint. While the other characters are oblivious to her actual joy in death, although it is described as such "When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease - of joy that kills," their definition of this joy equates to her love for her husband. In contrast, because Chopin writes from the perspective of Louise, we understand that the intermittent love she feels for her husband, love itself dismissed as the "unsolved mystery," pales in comparison to the joy she feels upon the discovery that she can now live with the "possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being."
In the opening of this short story, “The Story of an Hour”, written by Kate Chopin, Mrs. Mallard is identified as a woman with “heart trouble”. Although it is never specified in the story as being strictly physical, “heart trouble” alludes to the emotional distress Mrs. Mallard is in at the time according to the heavy burden her marriage lays upon her and her freedom. After her husband’s tragic death in a railroad incident, Louise realizes that now without the weight of a husband upon her, she is free to live her life for herself and as is satisfies her. By being circumscribed to a constricting marriage and not possessing the free will to express thoughts of her own, she is lead to a unique conclusion of her current condition. Louise is
In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”, the struggle for freedom is dominant. The main character, Mrs. Mallard, stands for a woman who is struggling internally and externally for freedom. After the sudden loss of her husband, Mrs. Mallard gets a taste of the freedom she was lacking in her marriage. Like Mrs. Mallard, women throughout history have struggled to find freedom and success away from their husbands. Chopin herself only became successful after the loss of her husband. In “The Story of an Hour”, Chopin shows women’s struggle for freedom during the Victorian period through Mrs. Mallard’s struggle for her own freedom.
In conclusion I don’t think the question is what killed Louise Mallard? How did she kill herself. Why was it so important for her to only live for herself and not think of others. This may have been the actual cause of her death. She had been the prime example of the New Woman who wanted to live for herself and not under the shadow of her husband. The actual thought of living for herself may have cost her life. I wonder why hadn 't she just got divorced if she didn 't love Mr. Mallard anymore before she
...egaining her husband and all of the loss of freedom her marriage entails. The line establishes that Louise's heart condition is more of a metaphor for her emotional state than a medical reality.” (Koloski) It is ironic that she accepts the death of her husband and is joyous and free, and then he ends up being alive after she walks out of the room with a sense of power. The ending of The Story of an hour by Kate Chopin implies that maybe the only true resolution of conflict is in death.
Chopin uses the heart trouble as a symbol to represent Louise lack of happiness and freedom very similar to a broken heart. Josephine mentioning her sister’s heart troubles can also be the author’s way of showing how society viewed women as fragile, and unable to withstand as much as men being that women were seen as inferior to men. Chopin also uses the window to symbolize the amount of hope and possibility awaited Louise now that she was free. (Expand) In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman used symbolism to get her message about woman suffrage across without saying it outright, just like Chopin. Gilman uses many symbols throughout the story to emphasis the struggles women faced. The house was the first symbol Gilman used, she first describes it as “haunted” (Gilman 151). When people think of something being haunted it usually by a trapped spirit, but Haunted means troubled. Gilman was describing how women felt during the 19th century as a result of physical and mental entrapment. Women often felt trapped whether in a place or a situation like a marriage. Haunted could have also been the narrator’s way of telling the readers something is wrong with her, she is troubled. This could be possible because throughout the story we see her in a troubled state. Another symbol was the description of the wallpaper’s
When Louise Mallard first hears that her husband was killed in a railroad accident, "she wept at once," and "went away to her room alone" (12). As she mourns, looking out of her window on the second floor of her home, a sudden change of heart begins to come over her. She notices "the delicious breath of rain," " a peddler . . . crying his wares," "notes of a distant song," "countless sparrows . . . twittering," and "patches of blue sky," "all aquiver with the new spring life" (13). As she stares at the sky, she begins to think about her newfound independence from her husband, uttering the words "free, free, free!" (13). What makes her develop such a sudden change in attitude? Could it be that she sees rebirth in the world through her wind...
Upon seeing her husband alive and well Louise realizes that the life she has imagined is not to be. The return of Brently signals a return of the patriarchal oppression in her life, and after imagining herself as an individual and then to be denied the chance to live freely is a punishment far worse than the crime. Louise loses her identity and once again becomes "his wife." Richards once more tries to protect her, a helpless woman, by attempting to block her view from her husband, because of the fragile state of her heart. Mrs. Mallard's strengths are gone, never to be acknowledged by the men in her life. For one, brief hour she was an individual. Now she finds herself bound by masculine oppression with no end in sight, and the result is death.
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.
In the story it states, “There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair… She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life” (Chopin 22). Through this quote, Chopin describes two different places that are a part of the same setting. By using the adjective, comfortable, when describing the armchair, Chopin creates a symbol representing her marriage. Then when she uses the adjective new, she creates another symbol representing the start of a new life without her husband. By using these two symbols, Chopin illustrates the new possibilities Louise has now that she is free. Due to the two symbols, and their context in the story Chopin further supports the main idea of the