Critical Analysis Essay on “The Story of an Hour”
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” expresses an undesirable view of marriage in the 1800’s. Chopin’s story presents the reader with a woman named Louise, who is delighted at the news of her husband’s death. This emotion is conveyed through the dialect in the story used to describe Louise’s emotions as she falters between shock and extreme joy at her brand-new freedom. Chopin does a wonderful job of communicating what she distinguishes in simple writing style, but when Louise’s emotions are described, the words are powerful and exciting. For example “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms.” (pg. 498) With that sentence the narrator is able to convey the unimaginable
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Louis cannot feel free unless her husband is no longer in her world. It seems this condition only affects Louis’s heart and shows that her misery from this disease comes from something internal not external. For instance, in one of the quotes from the story, it is evident that her husband loved Louise when she describes his face as “the face that had never looked save with love upon her.” (pg. 499) Her own feelings of love in exchange are only slightly described and it is evident that she does not share her husband’s feelings. When Chopin describes Louise’s emotions concerning something she is excited about, her dialect becomes alive and full of energy. This contradicts the parts in which Louise seems emotionally unattached. For example, in one of Chopin’s quotes, which begins with a very simple statement “And yet she loved him—sometimes. Often she had not” (pg. 499) demonstrates emotional indifference, but as the paragraph continues and her true emotions come to the forefront, the dialect comes alive along with Louise. When her emotions become too much to bare, so do the sentences and dialect. “There would be no one to live for in those coming years; she would live for herself” (pg. 499). There are no exciting words, just an
Marriage is a union of two companions who are deeply in love with each other; however, this is not always the case. In Chopin “Story of an Hour” Louise weeps of her husband’s death, but then comes to the realization that she was now a free, independent women who no longer feels oppressed by marriage. Louise; however, never gave a specific way in which her husband oppressed her, which Chopin hints that marriage suppress both men and women. In Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper” reveals that gender division had the effect of keeping a woman in an adolescent state of ignorance and prohibiting further development. Gilman critiques the position of women within the establishment of marriage and criticizes the traditional nineteenth century middle-class
In "The Story of an Hour," Kate Chopin suggests that in certain scenarios, the death of a loved one may be a blessing in disguise. Possible situations may include an abusive relationship, or an unhappy marriage, as the story suggests. Although the circumstances throughout the story might lead the reader to believe that Louise's husband's death would cause her great pain, ironically, when she hears the news, she feels a sense of euphoria. This suggests that death may not always cause agony.
For this story, I will use Mrs. Mallard as the example, and will discuss her challenges and struggles. According to the text, she was “afflicted with a heart trouble," so based on that alone we know that she struggled with delicate health issues. The narrator further described her as, “young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength.” The ‘lines’ or wrinkles of repression that he speaks of is most likely caused by the stress of suppressing feelings or emotions in her life. Although she described her husband in a positive light, I do not believe she was happy and/or in love with him. My assumption is based on the fact that she demonstrated an incredible sense of relief when she thought he had passed on.
The open window in “A Story of an Hour” holds a lot of symbolism towards the emotions that Mrs. Mallard discovers within the story. The open window constitutes as her epiphany moment in the story where she discovers her true feelings and bases her actions off of the freedom she finds when she looks beyond the scenery through the window with new eyes. The open window in Mrs. Mallards home is what triggers her emotional state in which she breaks out of her restraints that her marriage has put her in.
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
Kate Chopin’s 1894 short-story “The Story of an Hour” demonstrates a negative view on marriage in the nineteenth century. This narrative illustrated a woman that was an awe over the death of beloved husband by describing her overjoyed emotions as she ascends from mourning numbness to elation through brilliant use of word choice. Throughout the writer’s story, it is introduced that the main character has an inner desire for independence and self-identity. The word choice used to account the outside world was given at minimal, however her inner thought was greatly noted. Mrs. Mallard’s recognition of her own unhappiness gives her a “burst of liberation” from male oppression.
In “The Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin describes the series of emotions a married woman with a heart condition, Mrs. Mallard, endures after hearing about the death of her husband, Mr. Mallard. She assumes that she will be a mournful widow, but she ends up silently rejoicing. It turns out that she was not happily married and the thought of freedom from her attachments of marriage gave her
“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.
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.
My response to “story of an Hour” is to analysis how I feel about ‘what kind of man Brently Mallard as Mrs. Mallard remembers him’. Mrs. Mallard has a very odd way of describing what kind of husband he was during this story. She remembers him more as a burden them a joy during the time of their marriage. She feels as if a weight is lifted once she learns that Brently was killed. ‘Free’ is a very powerful word used in this story, which can tell us a lot about how her life was like when Mr. Mallard was home with his wife, compared to how it was once she thought he was gone.
There is immense power in well-written satire: it can make its audience laugh with witticisms rooted in truths, even make them think differently about any subject, mundane or critical. Bad satire, however, emphasizes all the wrong parts: it gets its facts wrong, goes off track, and closes its audience’s minds to any new way of thinking it might present. Li Chongyue and Wang Lihua’s article would be bad satire, a bad argument. Chongyue and Lihua’s “A Caricature of an Ungrateful and Unfaithful Wife” distorts Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” through imaginative exaggeration of character interaction, emotional ignorance, and its simplification of the characters and the text.
The Story of an Hour Essay I think the theme of “The Story of an Hour” is that love in certain situations can be temporary. For example, in paragraph 11 it is stated that “she saw beyond the bitter moment” and that “the coming years would belong to her absolutely”. Something similar is stated in paragraph 12 also, that being that “She would live for herself”. Lastly, in paragraph 13, it is said outright that “And yet she had loved him--sometimes”. In paragraph 11 it is said that “she saw beyond the bitter moment”.
The name of the story is "The Story of an Hour," by Kate Chopin. The themes of the story are death, freedom of women, and a kind of sadness but also joy. Everything happened in about an hour and it happened in her house. The plot is about a woman who thought her husband was killed in an accident from a railroad disaster and then she found out he was alive. The characters are Mrs. Mallard, her husband, her sister Josephine and her husband's friend Richards.
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 Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin describes an hour in the life of an oppressed woman bound by marriage in the nineteenth century. It is only when Mrs. Mallard’s husband dies in a sudden railroad accident that she realizes she is no longer tied together by the ropes of man. At first she is shocked and horrified by the tragedy, for she did say “she had loved him – sometimes” (Chopin). However, once the tears were wept, a new bountiful life of freedom was now in the eyes of Mrs. Mallard. Chopin uses imagery, third person omniscient point of view, and concepts of relief and joy in “The Story of an Hour” to convey the true feelings of Mrs. Mallard as she is freed from the strenuous and unjust oppression of women due to society’s expectation of gender roles.