The Story of an Hour

In life, everyone has experienced the loss of someone they loved, and the way the greave can show their true motivations. In Kate Chopin's “The Story of an Hour” Louise Mallard is left without a husband but her form of grief is different than mosts.

Within "The Story of An Hour", Chopin talks about death and illustrates the significance of it. This story implies that death may actually be a blessing under certain circumstances. The narration begins with Louise getting informed that her husband had past away in an accident. She's no ordinary women, but someone with heart disease. It leads the reader into thinking that she would be in great pain, suffering from the lost of her other

This stereotype is negative, as if having emotions is a bad thing. However, it is the women’s emotions that alters the course of their stories. According to Jamil, Louise has been repressing her emotions for many years to avoid this stereotype and to please her husband. When she looks out the window and sees the spring weather, it causes her to feel joy for the first time in a long time. All of a sudden, a rush of emotion crashes over her, and she discovers her true self (Chopin 15). Jamil contends that emotions are an enormous part of who one is, and without them, life is far harder to endure. This is exactly what happens to Louise. When she thinks that her husband is dead, these emotions return, and she can be her true self (Chopin 15-16). However, Jamil explains that psychological health can affect physical health, and the effect of repressing herself for so long might be a direct cause of Louise’s heart troubles. When she allows herself to feel, her heart pounds strongly and surely, but when she sees her husband again, her heart troubles return. In that moment, she allows herself to succumb to her failing heart. It is a lack of emotion that kills her, not a

At the beginning of the story no one wished to tell Mrs. Mallard about the death of her husband due to her heart condition. Her heart trouble is a symbol for the way she feels crushed or hurt by her marriage. During this time period women were expected to live under the control of their husbands, so while being married to Brently, she begins to lose her identity. In the story, she is only referred to as Mrs. Mallard she isn’t referred to as Louise until after her husband’s death. She is an accessory to her husband is forced to live in the shadow of her husband and as a result of this she has lost herself over the years. Louise’s character is used as a symbol to represent the women of this time period and show the sacrifices they make for their husbands and the troubles that come along with the inequalities they experience in marriage.

In the short story, “The Story of an Hour,” author Kate Chopin presents the character of Mrs. Louis Mallard. She is an unhappy woman trapped in her discontented marriage. Unable to assert herself or extricate herself from the relationship, she endures it. The news of the presumed death of her husband comes as a great relief to her, and for a brief moment she experiences the joys of a liberated life from the repressed relationship with her husband. The relief, however, is short lived. The shock of seeing him alive is too much for her bear and she dies. The meaning of life and death take on opposite meaning for Mrs. Mallard in her marriage because she lacked the courage to stand up for herself.

Josephine lends significance to the story because she serves to illustrate symbolism. A powerful symbolic detail in this story, one that is easily overlooked, but is of substantial significance to enhance understanding of the story, is the way in which Louise Mallard is referred to. The story begins its first sentence by referring to the protagonist as Mrs. Mallard. This simple reference is the first impression given to the reader of the main character. By calling her Mrs. Mallard as opposed to calling her Louise Mallard, or simply Louise the impression and understanding of her is shaped for the reader. Identifying and introducing the character, as Mrs. Mallard is essentially defining her through the existence of another. Her name, and thus her entire existence is not referred to as being that of an individual defined by her own traits, but instead as the wife of another individual. She is not her own person with a life that is her own, but rather she is defined only through being attached to Mr. Mallard. Josephine makes her most important

Second, both of these women were young and privileged yet harboring repressed emotions. One would think having all the comforts of life and youth would be enough to make one happy, but that is not the case for these two. John and Jane hired a nanny to take care of their child while she recovered in a rented summer house together. She had a maid, Jennie, working for her as well. Jane was not allowed to do chores and discouraged from doing anything to aggravate her nerves. Running away with her imagination is her only escape. Louise, on the other hand, sees her husband’s death as a restart to life. She admits to loving Brently sometimes, but begrudges the responsibility of marriage. She desires her independence, wishing for a long-life, mere moments before her abrupt end. Conceivably, she gets her freedom in death, though not the kind she had in mind. Jane and Louise were young and had good lives, yet they were deeply unhappy and had to keep their true

To deal with the pain she locks herself in her room, where she refuses to open the door. As Louise mourns, she begins to enjoy her new sense of freedom and is glad to have time to herself. She eventually opens the door and walks down the stairs happily. Louise’s husband walks in the door, unharmed. As soon as she sees him alive, Louise has a heart attack and dies. As you can see, the main character, Louise, is quite the individual. She showed us she has the power to rely on herself and be independent without her husband.

When they come to the bottom they heard keys opening the door and Brently walks in the door. Louise’s joy is shattered at that moment and when the doctors came they said “she died of heart disease, of joy that kills. Chopin uses the metaphor “joy that kills” to express to her readers the height of Louise’s joy. To experience the feeling of being free after years of marriage, “free body, free soul” (14), free life as a woman and the feeling of self-assertion, just for it to all be taken away from you within an hour is devastating. I believe she was so devastated that her heart couldn’t even handle the hurt she put on it.

Louise, like most people, is afraid of the unknown but Louise is a strong and intelligent woman and she quickly came around to the reality of what her life would be like without having the burden of an unhappy marriage to tend to. The ideal of marriage did not sit well with Louis although it is clear that her husband loved her when his face is described as “the face that had never looked save with love upon her.” (Chopin) Her own feelings of love in return are also minimally described and it is clear that she does not share his sentiments Louise says, “She had loved him-Sometimes. Often she had not.” Now that her husband was gone she was able to live for her and that thought excited

In the article “The Autonomous Female Self and the Death of Louise Mallard”, Mark Cunningham clearly states that “the story portrays the position of women in late nineteenth-century American society as so bleak that the attempt to break from the life-denying limitations of patriarchal society is itself self-destructive” (49). It evaluates Louise’s death as the tragedy of losing independence in marriage and being controlled by society’s denying perspective to female, as well as demonstrating the desire of the woman to live in an autonomous life at that time period. Upon this point, he emphasizes if Louise, representative of all women in the society, “break free of patriarchal definitions (wife, widow, lover) in her own mind, she will find no other social system to accept her: women have been unable to create a system of their own.” (Cunningham 49). It points out that the role of women which is only associated with domesticity and often tends to be undervalued. If Louise stops inhibiting her appetence of independence and develop a strong voice, it is like standing in the position that is gaining the whole social system. When Louise is there on her own, she fails to control the forbidden joy of being “free! Body and soul free.” (Chopin 3), which is actually contradicted to her death as her husband

Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” grabs its readers from the start and creates an unexpected twist at the end of the short story. Louise Mallard is given the news that her husband has died in a terrible train accident. To her surprise, he arrives home and “did not even know there had been one” (Chopin, 607). Upon the death of Louise who once believes she was a widow only to find that her husband is still alive, the confusion begins. The death of Louise is questioned by many critics as a state of shock, depression, and sadness. However, Mark Cunningham’s criticism of Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” states that her death was instead a discovery of freedom from the physical strains of her marriage with her husband and societal views

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

As Louise is starting to process and accept the fact that her husband is dead she started to question. One of the things that went through her mind was if they’ve been together for a long time what shall she do because he would be telling her what to do. Just like when it said, “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”. This meaning that she asked herself if she should be feeling happy for husband's death or sad because she don’t know what to do anymore.

The Story of an Hour reflects only one view of marriage. Many people are actually happy in their marriage and would grieve for years if their husband/wife were to die. But Louise is not one of them, she was unhappy in her relationship. Kate Chopin wrote about her grieving process to bring light to a time when these point of views were common, but repressed. She was just trying to highlight the problem.