Verbal Irony In The Story Of An Hour

In the stories “Story of an Hour”, “Everyday Use”, “The Necklace”, and “The Lottery” it is evident that irony was quite a large part of the short story. There is situational irony, which is when the situation turns out differently than expected. Also, dramatic irony is present, which is when you as a reader knows more than the character. The authors seem to base their whole story around irony to surprise their readers.

The Story of an Hour is about a woman, Mrs. Mallard, who suffers with a heart problem. Her husband’s friend, Richards, and her sister Josephine have to tell Mrs. Mallard that her husband has died in a train accident. They are both concerned that this news might danger Mrs. Mallard’s health. However, when Mrs. Mallard hears about the news, she feels excitement

Throughout “The Story of an Hour” many different variations of happiness as well as sadness take place. Kate Chopin, the author, uses many different examples of irony in this story to help explain a greater cause and effect towards the theme of the story. Kate Chopin and her excessive use of verbal, situational, and dramatic irony throughout her stories help to depict different events that occur in search of a deeper meaning.

To help better understand, here is the definition of dramatic irony: “irony that is inherent in speeches or a situation of a drama and is understood by the audience but not grasped by the characters in the story” (“dramatic irony”). We see this very clearly when we read about Mrs. Mallard being happy and free of her husband while she has been alone in her room. However, nobody else in the story knew about this yet; everyone believed that she was still upset and depressed. Mrs. Mallard’s sister, Josephine, knocks on her door and says, “Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door – you will make yourself ill” (Chopin 201). The reason behind this is because Josephine has no clue that Mrs. Mallard was not going to make herself ill. She was, in fact, the opposite of ill, “she arose at length and opened the door to her sister importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of victory” (Chopin 201). We, as the readers, knew this before the other character, which makes it an example of dramatic

The 1800’s. A time of elitism, frilly dresses, and unfortunately...sexism. Kate Chopin was a young feminist writer who had a lot to say about sexism and chose to speak her mind through literature. The Story of an Hour, which was written in 1894, is a tale about a woman with a weak heart being told with the sudden news that her husband has died, and while at first she is rather upset, she soon realizes that she wasn’t happy with him at all, and that now that he was gone she was finally free to live her life with a man controlling her. But then it turns out that he is actually alive, and after seeing him walk through the door she dies from shock. This story is an example of Situational Irony and Dramatic Irony, and this essay will explain it.

The Story of an Hour represents a single hour in Mrs. Louise Mallard’s life, in which a woman who has a weak heart due to emotional distress, experiences the momentary joy of freedom after hearing that her husband Brently Mallard had been killed in a railroad accident. Mrs. Mallard’s initial reaction, upon hearing of her husband’s death, is not far from what readers expected; she is deeply grief stricken, crying uncontrollably and wants to be left alone. However, during the hour she spent alone in her room, her state of mind changes dramatically. Sitting in the armchair motionless, she sees the blossoming

In “The Story of an Hour” we are taken through a journey. The journey is the thoughts and emotions going through Mrs. Mallards (Louise) mind. The journey only takes an hour, so everything moves at a fast pace. Louise seemed to process the news of her husband’s death without an initial element of disbelief and shock. She goes right into the reaction of grieving for her husband. She quickly begins to feel other emotions. At first she does not understand them. The journey is a way that Louise comes to her final thoughts of freedom. She looks into the future and looks forward to living a long life on her own terms.

The Story of an Hour, is about Louise Mallard, a woman who has heart trouble. She is informed by her sister that Brently Mallard, her husband has died in a railroad disaster. The story first informs us that Mrs. Mallard, “wept at once

In this story, the two irony’s that we’re used are the situational (or cosmic) irony and the dramatic irony, because when Mrs. Mallard had gotten the news that her husband was killed in the railroad disaster of course she cried, but when she went into her room to probably take in all that was going on, that’s when her true feelings came out. She felt a sense of relief and a sense of freedom in the fact that soon she will be able to just please herself and not have to deal with someone else’s demands. But come to find out the roles reversed when she went downstairs with her sister and that front door opened, her husband walked right in with no harm done to him. Out of shock, she collapsed and died. These ironies are related because nothing

Kate Chopin was an American author who wrote two novels that got published and at least a hundred short stories. In Kate’s short story The Story of the Hour she uses some of her traumatic event that happened in her lifespan in the short story even though it the story is fictional. A lot of her fictions were set in Louisiana and her best-known works focused on the lives of sensitive intelligent women. One-third of Mrs. Chopin’s stories are children’s stories. A lot of Mrs. Chopin’s novels were forgotten after she died in 1904 but according to Kate Chopin Biography, several of her short stories appeared in an anthology within five years after her death, others were reprinted, and slowly people came back to read her stories.

Charlotte Gilman and Kate Chopin were contemporary authors who were a product of their times. They wrote during the abolitionist movement, during the times when the gender roles were clearly defined and where women were given their specific roles and given a space within which they were expected to live and perform their duties. Although they had their freedom, the women of that time, especially white women in the upper middle class society were not completely free. Their position in the society and standing in their social circles was entirely dependent on their husband and in a way they were trapped in their marriage, slaves to the customs of the time. Gilman in her work, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper” and Chopin in “the Story of an Hour” talk about this situation, the protagonists in their stories trapped in

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 Story of an Hour" is about a woman, Mrs. Louise Mallard, who is being oppressed by her husband, Brently. Although it appears that she loves Brently, she admits that some of the times she does not. This is not to say that he was a bad husband or she was not a good wife, but they were not as in love as everyone else thought they were.

Mallard. This story has four characters in it- Mr. Mallard, Mrs. Mallard, Josephine, and Richards. Of these four characters, Mrs. Mallard and Josephine are the two main characters, with Mrs. Mallard being the most prominent main character. This story is set in the mid to late 1800s (which is the time it was written), and it is set in an average American home for that time period. Besides briefly mentioning the railroad accident, the story completely occurs in the Mallard’s house. After reading “The Story of An Hour”, I found that the narrator is very descriptive in details- “In the street below a peddler was crying… eaves” (Page 278). These descriptions help to show the difference in times between the mid to late 1800s and nowadays to

“The Story of an Hour” is a very short text, so the author does not have room to develop a complex plot. In the exposition, the reader learn that Mrs. Mallard has a heart problem, so the other characters wanted to be delicate while sharing the news of her husband’s death. The rising action is when Mrs. Mallard’s sister shares the news and Mrs. Mallard responds by weeping and going to her room. The climax occurs when Mrs. Mallard learns that she will be free from the restrictions the “civil law” forces on women at that time. According to the text, “When she abandoned herself a little whisper escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her