Louise Mallard Character Analysis

The story of an Hour by Chopin is about Louise Mallard desire for freedom. Throughout her life Mrs. Mallard was incapable to leave her home due to a heart illness. The doctor explained how although a sudden shock could kill Louise she would be able to leave the house. Louise was beyond happy to finally be given the chance to leave her home. Brently Mallard did everything in his power to stop her from leaving by using the sickness as a justification. Mr. Mallard would only dedicate little time and affection to his wife. The newspaper had reported a railroad disaster in which Brently Mallard’s name appeared. Louise sister’s Josephine and Brently’s friend knowing of her heart condition gently broke the devastating news to her.

Louise Mallard is the protagonist of The Story of an Hour. The entire story is about her preservation. Chopin portrays Mrs. Mallard as a woman who is in deep suffering. She is not only suffering from a marriage she is not happy with, but she is also suffering from her medical condition. As if she had not suffered enough, she also puts a threat to her own life. We see this when Josephine is knocking on her door while she refuses to open it (Chopin). What is unknown to Josephine however is that her sister is in fact not suffering but savoring the moment.

The character Mrs. Mallard from Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” can be considered both sympathetic and unsympathetic for various reasons. She could be seen as a sympathetic character because of the times Mrs. Mallard’s character came from. On the other hand, she could be seen as unsympathetic for how her character is very self-centered. We see this in how she is constantly rationalizing with herself that her feelings of joy at her husband’s death were well founded. There are also several other variables that must be taken into consideration when deciding if Mrs. Mallard is a sympathetic character, or not.

In the Deep South women were always known of as housewives. They were not given individual identities but rather a collective personality that all women possessed. Kate Chopin uses this theme of the individuality of women in all of her short stories and other writings. In The Story of An Hour, Chopin expresses this very well, using the character Louise Mallard. As in Chopin’s typical stories, Louise Mallard is a woman looking for her inner self and thinks she found it but goes through a hard time and attempts to overcome it while having a positive outlook on life. However, through her marriage she has been a patient, self-sacrificing, restless woman who believed she was given a chance to change her life around for the better, which

After hearing about her husband’s death Louise immediately breaks down and begins to sob as

48-55, ProQuest, http://nclive.org/cgi-bin/nclsm?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/ 226924170?accountid=3442. Literary critic Mark Cunningham presents personal views and ideas about the character, Louise Mallard, in “The Story of an Hour.” He presents the argument that Louise did not pass away after seeing her husband, Brently Mallard, arrive home. Rather he argues she passed away from the emotional strain brought on by the awakening moments of freedom experienced soon after learning of her loss. Cunningham also explains

Moreover, "The Story of an Hour", shows that Louise felt her husband's domination through the "powerful will bending her" (14), later she is in "this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being." (15). This last statement indicates this newborn contention in Louise, made only possible by Mr. Mallard's death. In Mr. Mallard's death, Louise finds herself being able to assert herself in unimaginable ways; Mrs. Mallard is no longer limited to the confines of her marriage. Ultimately, all of this new brazenness and freedom is dependent

In Kate Chopin's short story "The Story of an Hour," there is much hatred. The first hatred detected is in the way that Louise reacts to the news of the death of her husband, Mr. Mallard. Before Louise's reaction is revealed, Chopin turns to how the widow feels by describing the world according to her outlook of it after the bad news. Louise is said to "not hear the story as many women have heard the same." Rather, she accepts it and goes to her room to be alone. Now the person reading starts to see the world through Louise's eyes, a world full of new life.

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

In “The Story of an Hour” the main character Louise Mallard suffers from a bad heart, but otherwise, she is young and cute. Louise learned from family members that her husband had just been killed in a railroad disaster. As she grieves alone in her upstairs bedroom, she suddenly is hit with new emotions. She realizes that she did love her husband and he loved her, but what she wants more than anything is to be free. Free to go and do as she pleases without anyone watching over her. Later

The death of the main character Louise Mallard is a commonly debated topic when discussing “The Story of an Hour.” In Mark Cunningham’s article “The Autonomous Female Self and the Death of Louise Mallard in Kate Chopin’s ‘Story of an Hour’” he makes arguments for the common interpretations of Mrs. Mallards death. He states that “it is critical commonplace” to assume that the sight of her husband alive kills her (n.p.). Even though the story never directly states that Mrs. Mallard sees her husband, it is easier for ones brain to jump to the conclusion that her

In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, we meet Mrs. Louise Mallard as a newly grieving widow. A woman who has prominent health issues of her own suffering from the physical and mental turmoil of losing a loved one. As her sister, Josephine, and husband’s friend, Richard, broke the news of her husband’s death we find Mallard in a position of conflict with herself. The feeling of despair and abandonment engulfs the main character as she is haunted by this gut feeling of what her life will become without the man who loved her. The climax peaks where Mallard struggles to physically cope with the sorrow that fills her until a sudden shift in the plot suggests somewhat of an epiphany through her break down. Mallard’s perspective goes from mourning to a boisterous celebration of joy within such an instant, her outcry was confused for making herself ill with her mourning. As her sister reached to console her, she met Josephine with quite the contrast of emotions from when we initially met Mallard. A jolt of raw unadulterated joy from the realization that she is in every sense of the word, free. The reaction to her epiphany would suggest an underlying suppression of her true feelings that our main character may have not realized throughout her marriage.

Louise Mallard is Kate Chopin short story's protagonist. As noted earlier, Louise has a heart trouble during the time when her friends are to break her husband's death news to her. She reacts to the news despite her heart condition with a flood of grief. She quickly retreats to her room which indicates repressiveness which she is accustomed to. She briefly feels guilt out of experiencing joy at the freedom which is brought by the death of her husband. She is later faced with some complex mix of love and resentment emotions which are elicited by the thoughts of Brently's tenderness with absolute control of her life from her husband. She ultimately welcomes her independence which she has newly found and then takes on the newly self-possessed individual's life. This essay will emphasize my argument on how the story shows some aspect of mental change in character, and I will identify where this starts in the character, what happens to cause the change, what the change is, and the consequences of this change for the character.

The Hour of Change “The Story of an Hour” is a piece of literature which shows off great examples of characterization. The story revolves around a single woman, Louise Mallard, and her changes in character after a series of traumatic events. Kate Chopin, the author, has unique methods of characterization and character development which develop Mrs. Mallard’s persona into a unique figure in the story. As a whole, Chopin’s indirect portrayal of Mrs. Mallard as a round, dynamic, and highly individualized character is the most appropriate way in which she could have written the story.

Socrates, a Greek philosopher once said: "Each one must know himself." Unfortunately, most of us are not aware of our true character. Social conventions are the main cause making us repress what we really think and feel. Only when unexpected events happen, we do have an opportunity to take a close look at our hidden self. "The Story of An Hour" by Kate Chopin reflects the dramatic development process of Mrs. Mallard's character through the death of her husband; it demonstrates that the true identity cannot be sheltered forever.