Story Of An Hour Critical Analysis

By the repetition of the words as a reader we come to understand the meaning behind the story and how Louise actually felt towards her husband. The theme of the story is mainly the forbidden joy of independence. Due to that the story was written years ago where women were very dependent to their husbands Louise actual feelings of joy and happiness towards her husband death was forbidden by society during this

Even the author's description of Louise character "She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength" informs the reader that this is not a woman who will allow her husband's death inspire in her own. However, we feel the irony of her discovery in the fact that it takes the death of her husband for Louise to think freely and realize that she wants, needs, in fact cannot live without living for herself.

From her window, Louise can see beyond her current life to a life full of possibility. Chopin writes, “But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.” (Chopin) It was standing at this open window that Louise dared to enjoy her first taste of freedom. One commentator suggests, “Everything that she experiences through her senses suggests joy and spring—new life….Once she fully indulges in this excitement, she feels that the open window is providing her with life itself.” (The Story) It makes sense, then that soon after she turns away from this window, she loses her freedom once again. (Nicely

By examining Louise through the narrator’s eyes, it is known she has heart trouble, is unhappy in her marriage, and wants more for herself in life. Chopin also describes her as, “young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength” (65). Her eyes appeared to have no life in

Louise Mallard just finds out that her husband has been killed in a horrific accident at work. She must come to term with being a widow. In the hour after receiving notice of the death, she quietly reviews her life as she currently lives in a time where women working outside the home is not an option. The author of this story does not just focus on the grief that is faced by women in the late 19th century, but also how women do not have the luxury to grieve and must think their next step to ensure their survival. That moment of clarity comes light in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”.

Louis Mallard feels relief when she knows her husband died. Did she really love him? Can we call that “Love”? the word we are looking for here is the opposite of love, maybe hate. Louise yells the word “Free”!, in other words she is saying she can finally do anything she wants and doesn't have to feel controlled or pressured. She cries, but of happiness and not of sadness. Louise starts to think of her future where she can finally be alone, and she feels joyfulness. She will be free, on her own without anyone to oppress her. She thinks that all women and men oppress one another even if they do it out of kindness. Louise knows that she often felt love for Brantley but tells herself that none of that matters anymore. She feels overjoyed with

Louise had been heart broken at first at the news of her husband's death, but soon she became ecstatic at her new opportunity of a new and fresh start in life. In the story, her sister, Josephine, came to the room that Louise had enclosed

The presence of the protagonist Louise’s husband Brently at the beginning and the end of the story seem to trap Louise within a metaphorical cage from which she can never escape peacefully. However, it is what Louise does within the cage that awards this story its reputation. As soon as Louise discovers that her husband is dead, she is left in disbelief and awe, which Josephine stereotypically assumes is grief from her husband’s death. She says, “Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door - you will make yourself ill,” suggesting the politically correct thing for Louise to be doing was grieving, when ironically, she has been “ill” her whole life, and she is finally cured (Chopin). Louise is essentially trapped by the cagelike form of the story, but the reader gets a look inside her mind through this excursion into freedom. The only escape that Louise finds is through death, ironically of the shock that her husband’s arrival brings. The brevity of the poem emphasizes the same point, representing that her personality was always there and active, but merely masked by the societal pressure put on her to conform to her husband’s whims. Interestingly, such societal pressure extends past the page to Chopin’s publishing of the story itself. Had Louise not died, most

In the Story of an Hour,Louise’s reaction to her husband’s death is obvious grief,although her reaction was perhaps more violent than other women, it was an appropriate one.However,Louise began to realize that she was an independent women,a feeling that enlivens and excites her.She at first tries to destroy the joy she feels to “ beat it back with her will.”(sparknotes 1)

Louise Mallard was overwrought with grief when she discovered that her husband was killed in a train accident and could not fathom living without him, because in the 1800s, a woman’s entire life was dedicated to serving men. With no man to serve, she could not imagine what she was going to do with her life. After Louise found out about her husband's passing, she “wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms” (169). This shows the depth and reality of the grief she was feeling as a woman whose entire life had been changed. She does not know yet how she actually feels about Brently’s death as she has not had a proper amount of time to pass through the stages of grieving. Once she calmed herself, she sat in a chair alone in a room feeling “pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul” (169). This expressed the weariness she felt while she was accepting the loss of her husband. Although these quotes depict Louise as a depressed wife mourning the loss of her husband, they also show the effect of the dependence on men that society forced on women.

The narrator shows that Louise does feel some grief when she first hears the news of her husband. However, there is a shift in how the narrator presents Louise and her role. When she begins to think about Brently in a coffin or grave, the narrator states that “She knew she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death...But she beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely” (Chopin 1). This section that the narrator displays, reveals that Louise acknowledges that Brently’s death is upsetting but she is is willing to attain her independence from her him and shape her own identity without him. Furthermore, the narrator illuminates Louise’s want for liberty, when they make Louise compare love to freedom. The narrator show Louise contemplating this idea by saying “What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being” (Chopin 2). This illustrates that Louise would prefer to be completely free, rather than have love, because to her love means very little in comparison to not having any ties to someone or something. Louise, according to the narrator, is looking forward to being completely alone, and no longer have to live for her husband, as women had to

“The Story of an Hour” is written in third-person omniscient form which gives the reader the ability to understand what Louise Mallard is thinking literally, as well as why she changes her moods so rapidly. Louise, the story’s main protagonist, is a smart and independent woman who suffers from a heart problem. This is symbolic of how she feels like her marriage with her husband, Brently, has oppressed her. Brently Mallard is Louise’s husband who supposedly died in a train accident. According to Fahimeh Q. Berenji, Louise is “oppressed by the patriarchal authority in marriage and expresses her thoughts once she thinks she is liberated from that oppression”

We see that it is clear that Louise feels this way not only through her words but from symbols Chopin inserts throughout the story. The narrator states, “There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair.” (Chopin). The author describes the chair as “comfortable” and “roomy” and, therefore, is a symbol of how Louise feels now that her husband is gone. She is comfortable or content with the fact that she is now an independent woman. The word “roomy” can be used in the sense that Louise is now out of an oppressed marriage that could have made her feel small but now her life is full of room for her to be free and move about. The second symbol Chopin uses is that of an open window. The open window is representing her new freedom and the opportunities that await her. As Louise gazes out the window she hears things like birds and see things like a blue sky. Through the use of these images readers can conclude that these things represent her new and happy life in the future. However, the window also represents her unreachable freedom because she can see it but she never actually got to have it. Chopin also uses the motif of weeping or crying in her story. Her crying represents what her oppressive marriage was like but once she realizes her new found freedom she is too overcome with happiness to cry anymore. The weeping and sadness end along with her married

First, Louise’s complex emotion when she heard her husband’s death suggests that Louise was not a normal woman. After she heard her husband’s death, she cried for a while but quickly, she felt the environment getting more and more comfortable as well as her emotions, “the spring life”, “ comfortable, roomy armchair” and “ monstrous joy” etc. all of these suggest that Louise was a different woman who wanted her own freedom, and hoped to live by herself rather than always stand behind her husband which proved that who Kate wanted to describe was an independent woman convincingly.

First, Louise’s complex emotion when she heard her husband’s death suggests that Louise was not a normal woman. After she heard her husband’s death, she cried for a while but quickly, she felt the environment getting more and more comfortable as well as her emotions, “the spring life”, “ comfortable, roomy armchair” and “ monstrous joy” etc. all of these suggest that Louise was a different woman who wanted her own freedom, and hoped to live by herself rather than always stand behind her husband which proved that who Kate wanted to describe was an independent woman convincingly.