Kate Chopin's 'The Story Of An Hour'

In the past many decades the definition of what a marriage means changed dramatically in some areas. For the author of both stories, Kate Chopin, she wanted the reader to get something out of the story. She likes to explore all types of themes in her stories such as, racism, the roles of women, and adultery. With these themes and messages she struggled to have most of her stories published. In many of her stories she passed along these messages through the manner of a marriage. In her short stories “The Story of an Hour” and “Desiree 's Baby” she showed just how different marriages could be as well as how similar they can be. Chopin portrays the lives of the main characters, Louise Mallard from “The Story of An Hour” and Desiree Aubigny

Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor discusses many topics and insights that can be found in literature. Foster explains how each are used and the purposes they serve while providing numerous examples. Many of Foster’s insights can be found in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of An Hour” which was written during a time in history when women were often restricted by society and marriage. The story speaks of a woman who felt freed from the burden of marriage when she thought her husband died, only to die the moment she realized he was actually alive. Foster’s insights about weather, heart disease, and flight that are evident in “The Story of An Hour” greatly influence the story’s interpretation in several ways.

“The Story of an hour” by Kate Chopin is about an a woman named Ms.Mallard. She has basically been controlled by men her whole life. In the story her husband dies and she starts to look at everything in a different way and starts to think about the future and the things she is gonna do now that her husband is not controlling her. Nothing was really wrong with there marriage Ms. Mallard was just never able to speak her mind because she was a woman. She felt like her husband was holding her back from life and she had to reach out and go her own way.

“The story of an hour” by Kate Chopin was a story that was ironical yet profoundly deep. As a student I have been asked to read “a story of an hour” many times, and every time I’m surprised by how I enjoy it. People can read thousands of stories in their life times and only a handful will every stand out to them, stories that can draw out an emotion or spark a thought are the ones that will standout more. For me and “a story of an hour” the thought of freedom is what draws me the most as a teenage I would feel a deep and heavy cage that traps me in its invisible snarl. It is hard to explain why one feels that way many a times feelings are just a way of showing frustration. Mrs. Mallard I assume has many frustrations, and she associated her imprisonment with her marriage to her husband. In many versions Mrs. Mallard says he is not a mean man and she did have feelings. It is just an unexplainable blanket of depression that anyone can fall through. Like a cold or an unsuspecting wounds one cannot prevent what one does not know of until it becomes apparent .as the story progresses I add more of my own emotion and slowing I draw a bridge that connects me to the basic feel of the story. In the begging I am just an outsider looking in not yet connected with their feeling, then the realization hits one and so does mine, and finally when Mrs. Mallard freedom from her is taken yet it is not. This is what make the story believable the unchained freedom of feelings that is taboo for

Kate Chopin’s “The Story of An Hour” was published in 1894 in Vogue, during a time when women do not have any legal rights. They have low education level and have no opportunity to work; what they can do is stay at home and manage the family. All their lives, they rely on their husband. Women at that time do not think about why they should be treated this way; they were being silenced by society. Kate Chopin uses the character Mrs. Mallard as the representative of all women who wants freedom at that time, and she criticizes the way society treats them, yet the difference of Mrs. Mallard’s values compared to society’s makes her become egotistic and her death end up not changing people’s mind of how to treat women properly.

Similarly, Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" also draws readers into the emotions revealed within Louise Mallard's mind when her husband appears to have been killed. Chopin also succeeds powerfully but accomplishes this through the third person narration of this one character [with Louise as the center of awareness]. With third person narration in this story, one is provided a bystander perspective concerning other characters' treatment of her and the entire situation/scene set-up in the exposition of the story. The narrator assures us that ". . . great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death" (177). This type of narration brings both a sense of

When Louise Mallard heard the news of her husband’s alleged death, she wept initially, but as she was looking out of the window, she suddenly started feeling very joyous. The story reads, “When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!"” It is unexpected for Louise to be happy right after he husband dies. This is an example of situational irony. Chopin uses this to cause the reader to stop and consider different explanations for why Louise is happy and jubilant about being free. The reader will probably immediately assume that Louise has not been happy with her marriage,

Although The Story of an Hour is a literary fiction based on an inner conflict of the emotions of a protagonist, it holds a sense of a commercial fiction with a “what happens next “feel to it. It is a story of the last hour of Mrs. Louise Mallard and her many emotions concerning loss, gain, and the freedom she so joyously awaited.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She didn’t know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air. Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. 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.

I read the book called The Story of an Hour, and in that story the main character Kate Chopin sheds goodness in one hour of Mrs. Mallard’s life. She used the theme of secretly being an unhappy wife with a bad heart, to shed happiness on the journey of feelings Mrs. Mallard spends the entire hour to compare how her husband’s death is exactly as her own’s death. From when at that moment “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms” (pg. 555) to the most shocking moment that stopped her heart when she finds after all this time he is alive and well, her emotions and thoughts are expressed with this fresh and new perspective she has of the entire world. In that very moment she told her self in a whisper like voice “free!

Death is a common concept with common reactions. Society expects the response to the death of a spouse to be one of tears, depression, and years of mourning. However, the first time someone feels relief or happiness at the news of his or her spouse’s death is suddenly viewed as inappropriate, so it must be kept on the inside. The problem is that the reason behind the happiness is often forgotten to be analyzed. What was happening behind closed doors? What was the marriage representing? Mrs. Mallard is an important example of this in Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour. She just received the news of her husband’s death and is obliged to weep at once. Nevertheless, once she gets away from the pressure of the onlookers, she finds more happiness than sadness in which she cannot fully express outside of her room. Therefore, the main conflict originates with the gender issues shown throughout the text. These issues include a married woman’s identity loss, entrapment, and feeling of being unloved.

In Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” she makes it clear that someone can feel both happy and sad at the end of a relationship. This story was in the course of a house after a woman who was told by her sister that her husband had died in a railroad disaster. After she was told of her husband’s dead she had “Wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sisters arms” (2) but after this she went to her bedroom and began to whisper “free, free, free!” (10) Under her breath. Her sister came back to her bedroom, thinking she was going to make herself ill and asked her to open the door. When she opened the door she did with a “feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of victory.” (18) There are many

“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, is a short novel about Louise Mallard accepting that her husband had recently suffered a life ending tragedy. She quickly gets over the devastating news and begins to look forward to what the future has on hold for her. When she goes downstairs to meet up with Richard she sees her husband, Brently Mallard, in the front door alive and she ends up dying.

As i was reading “ The Story of an Hour”, I realized it was very in depth. I found the story to be deep because love and marriage could be a powerful thing. But, could also be easily dismissed. A range of emotions: feeling of grief, lost of partnership, independence, freedom.

In Kate Chopin’s , “A Story of An Hour,” many questions can be asked with very few answers given. The first that grabs the reader's attention is the wife’s over joyfulness at her husband’s death? Was the husband abusive? Did seeing her husband still alive kill her due to being happy or the realisation that her dreams had been crushed? The author doesn’t leave the reader with many answers to these questions. This means that the reader must draw their own conclusions of what they’ve read. By taking a closer look at the text the answers to these questions can be revealed even though there isn’t a right or wrong answer.