The Story Of An Hour
“The Story of an Hour”
In “The Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin introduces readers to Mrs. Louise Mallard, a fragile housewife with a heart condition, whose husband, Brently Mallard, has been reportedly killed in a train accident. Mrs. Mallard is seemingly devastated by this, though later revealed is her inner longing for independence. She sees past her mournful feelings over her husband’s death, and
concentrates on her remaining time in life, a time that will belong to her alone. When her husband, and his overbearing qualities are suddenly thrust back into her life, it is too much for the fragile Mrs. Mallard to bear. Her friends are surprised when she dies of heart failure at the sight of her husband, for they are unaware of the conflicting emotions that she feels over her marriage. Although Louise Mallard loves and cares for her husband, news of his death pleases her somewhat, and opens her eyes to the freedom that her marriage has so long repressed. The storyline is greatly intensified by this presence of conflict. Brently Mallard was a “kind, tender” man, who had never looked “save with love, upon [his wife]” (Chopin, par. 6). Mrs. Mallard loves her husband, though she feels trapped by him and their marriage to one another. She “wept at once [upon hearing the news of her husband’s death], with
sudden, wild abandonment,” though she later feels the joy and relief of knowing that all her future years of solitude will provide her with the freedom she has yearned for throughout her marriage (Chopin, par. 2). After the initial grief Mrs. Mallard feels in hearing of Mr. Mallard’s death, she is unable to decide if she is, in fact, being held by a “monstrous joy” (Chopin, par. 6). She despises the power
that her husband subconsciously holds over her. Being a woman of the nineteenth century, when married life was the proper life for a woman, Mrs. Mallard has probably never felt the freedoms and independence of the single life. She has always lived under “that blind...
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