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Freedom In Emancipation And The Story Of An Hour

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Many of Kate Chopin’s short stories depict the theme of freedom. In the stories “Emancipation” and “The Story of an Hour,” Chopin uses freedom as a theme to show her readers that independence isn’t always as horrifying as it may seem. Although the idea of freedom is expressed differently in each of these two stories, both still show that freedom is a vital part of having a happy life. In “The Story of an Hour,” Louise Mallard is told by her sister and husband’s good friend Richard that her husband Brently was killed in a train accident. Her initial reaction, like any other wife finding out about her husband’s death would be, was mournful; however, after sitting alone in her room, pondering about her future with no husband, Louise becomes …show more content…

Louise doesn’t think she will get sick, and Chopin describes her to be “drinking in a very elixir of life,” but she comes out of her room and goes downstairs to find her husband walking in the door (525). It is at this point in the story that Louise discovers that Brently hadn’t really been involved in the accident at all. Richard sees Louise collapse and tries to block Brently from seeing her fall. When the doctors come, they say Louise dies of heart disease and as Chopin describes it, “the joy that kills” (526). “The joy that kills,” is suggesting the fact that because Louise had been so happy about her husband’s death (because she was denied that freedom), her heart finally gave out.
“Chopin, however, warns the reader in the first sentence that the situation is not completely rosy because Louise "was afflicted with a heart trouble" (352): a physical problem” (Mayer 95). Louise Mallard’s preexisting heart trouble may have been a factor in the reason why she died of heart disease when she found out that Brently was actually alive. It can be argued that since she already had a bad heart, the shock from initially hearing the news of her husband’s death, combined with her realization that she had been set free, overworked her heart as she was switching between several different emotions and

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