Irony In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

Throughout the story, Chopin adds bits of foreshadowing to hint at the demise of Mrs. Mallard. On the opening page of the story, the first sentence states, “Knowing Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with heart trouble, great care was taken to break her...husband's death” (6). This sentence leads the reader to believe that Mrs. Mallard is already gravely ill. On the final page of the story, Mrs. Mallard argues with her sister, Josephine, who fears that Mrs. Mallard is making herself sick from heartbreak. Mrs. Mallard shouts, “Go away. I am not making myself ill” (8). This foreshadows that she is already making herself sick.

“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin is a tightly written short story that takes place within a single hour of Mrs. Louise Mallard’s seemingly unsatisfying marriage. Although the story is no more than two pages long, one should not look down upon the shortness of the story, but instead be amazed at how packed such a small piece of literature is. The major theme the story revolves around is the oppressive views of marriage that the main character, Mrs. Mallard experiences in the latter part of the 19 century, a time in which when women had very few rights and it was normal for women to keep a tidy house and stray away from any type of manual work, including the workforce. When Kate Chopin wrote the story, Chopin managed to use all of the

Kate Chopin is known for being criticized for empowering the subject of female sexuality and independence. In Chopin’s short story, “The Story of an Hour”, it is placed in a time where men were known as being the head of the household while women were only in charge of raising the children and caring for the home. In the 1890s, women didn’t have so much power to themselves compared to today’s society where female empowerment is frequently encouraged. Chopin’s story narrates a sequence of Mrs. Mallard’s emotions that goes within the motion of the story. As she overcomes the sudden death of her husband, her emotion of grief soon turns into the sudden feeling of freedom, later on emerging into a strong independent woman.

Mrs. Mallard is pleased that her husband has died, which certainly is not the reaction that one would expect. Another case of situational irony is the description of Mrs. Mallard's surroundings after hearing the news of her husband's death. When Mrs. Mallard retreats to her room, she looks out the window. The majority of times when surroundings are described in stories after bad news, everything looks dark and gloomy because of the sadness that the character must be feeling. However, the surroundings Mrs. Mallard experiences are anything but dark and gloomy. The world was described as warm and friendly. She could hear someone singing and the birds twittering. "There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds" (Chopin 213). It seems as though her surroundings are a reflection of her feelings. Normally, one would expect her to be feeling sad and depressed, and therefore her surroundings to be depressing as well.

Many people have believed that marriage validates a woman’s life and also defines her. Once this idealized milestone has been reached, she then begins to define herself through marital expectations. These stereotypical expectations include bearing children, maintaining a home, and living up to the preset standards that a woman should. Women have upheld this traditional role for centuries and have been reluctantly accepting while doing so. The problem with this traditional belief is that orienting a life around marriage—without experiencing the joys that exploring individuality brings beforehand—will only result in a woman’s unhappiness; Mrs. Mallard, the main character in “The story of an Hour,” experiences just this, for she is consumed by a severe depression that also effects the health of her tender heart. Her marriage becomes oppressive and renders disappointment and un-fulfillment in all that it entails, leaving her bereft of both metaphorical and physical life. She was never able to feel satisfied with her marriage because she never experienced life beforehand. In “The Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin uses irony to illustrate that a traditional marriage harms a woman both physically and mentally.

In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” allows one to explore many ironic instances throughout the story, the main one in which a woman unpredictably feels free after her husband’s assumed death. Chopin uses Mrs. Mallard’s bizarre story to illustrate the struggles of reaching personal freedom and trying to be true to yourself to reach self-assertion while being a part of something else, like a marriage. In “The Story of an Hour” the main character, Mrs. Mallard, celebrates the death of her husband, yet Chopin uses several ironic situations and certain symbols to criticize the behavior of Mrs. Mallard during the time of her “loving” husband’s assumed death.

Mallard underwent a change when she came to the realization that she would no longer be under the control of her husband and was free. She began to think about all the time she would have to herself and “Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body” (Chopin 279). Her previous state of sadness and mourning over the loss of her husband diminished. However, her joyous outlook on her new life was short lived due to her death from her heart disease after she saw her husband, whom she thought was dead, walk through the door. This is an extremely drastic change for Mrs. Mallard because she went from being alive to being deceased.

When Mrs. Mallard was looking out of the window all of the outside world seemed to be coming to her indirectly in a way that it reached her faintly and not all at once just like the emotions of her freedom had did. “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life” (Chopin 476).Mrs. Mallard was not looking at the trees themselves she was looking past them and looking forward to what was ahead of the trees and not what the weather was like at the current moment. This I believe is how she unwarily started to come by her emotions by not focusing on the now but rather on the future without her husband just like she was looking forward on to the spring, such as “But she saw beyond that bitter moment a

Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour is a brilliant short story of irony and emotion. The story demonstrates conflicts that take us through the character’s emotions as she finds out about the death of her husband. Without the well written series of conflicts and events this story, the reader would not understand the depth of Mrs. Mallard’s inner conflict and the resolution at the end of the story. The conflict allows us to follow the emotions and unfold the irony of the situation in “The Story of an Hour.”

“The Story of An Hour” focuses on sixty minutes in the life of a young nineteenth-century woman, Mrs. Mallard. Upon learning of her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard experiences an epiphany about her future without a husband. Her life, due to heart problems, suddenly ends after she unexpectedly finds out her husband is actually alive. Mrs. Mallard’s actions cause the reader to cogitate a hidden meaning weaved into Kate‘s short story. Chopin had an idea that women felt confined in their marriages, and the idea is brought out through the protagonist’s initial reaction, excessive joy, and new perspective of the world following the upsetting news.

There are myriad levels of symbolism which Chopin invokes in order to express the principle theme of this work. The very fact that the protagonist of the story, Mrs. Mallard, learns that her husband has died symbolizes the fact that she is now free from his will and influence upon her life. However, Chopin chooses to express this notion most efficaciously by expressing Mrs. Mallard's newfound liberty or what she believes is her newfound liberty through the symbolism of spring, as the

The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin is a short yet complex story, describing Mrs Mallard’s feelings. It focuses on the unfolding emotional state of Mrs Mallard after the news of her husbands death, and has overflowing symbolism and imagery. It is an impressive literary piece that touches the readers’ feelings and mind and allows the reader to have a connection to Mrs Mallard’s emotional process. Although the story is short, it is complete with each word carrying deep sense and meaning. It is written in the 19th century, a time that had highly restrictive gender roles that forbade women to live as they saw fit. Mrs Mallard experiences something not everyone during this time has the luck to have; the happiness of freedom that the reader only

Upon hearing the death of her husband's, Mrs. Mallard went through many different emotions. The first emotion is grief, the author tried to compare Mrs. Mallard to other women that would've responded to the news of their husbands death with "paralyzed inability" ( "she

In ‘The Story of an Hour’ the struggles and hardships of women in day to day life are conveyed. In ‘The Story of an Hour’, Chopin implies that marriage, even when

The use of imagery is displayed heavily throughout the story to reflect the feelings of Mrs. Mallard following the news of her husband’s abrupt death. The setting outside her window is very descriptive and allows the audience to connect this imagery to the future that Mrs. Mallard is now seeing opening for her. As she is looking out of the window in her bedroom, she sees “trees that were all aquiver with new spring life” as well as sparrows “twittering in the eaves” (Chopin). This represents the joy and realization of a new life for Mrs. Mallard. She can now start over as a free woman instead of living as a man’s property trapped inside the house; this is where the woman’s place was during this period while only