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 beginning of the story sets the theme for the whole story. We are told about the heart condition that inflicts Louise. This is significant throughout the story. The heart condition is a symbolic way of describing her thoughts of oppression she felt about her marriage. She was trapped and isolated by the marriage. She felt the need to hide these feelings. Women of her era were supposed to be home and under their husbands command. The story has her going through this journey privately. That is significant in the fact that now in her husband’s passing, she will be alone. She will need to work through things by herself. She will be able to go through the whole process on her own, without being judged and persuaded to feel differently. She grieves for her husband a very short time. She then begins to feel a sense of freedom. This initially makes her feel guilty and
Louise wants to live her own life, she wants to be her own person but she cannot because of the restrictions her husband and even her sister put on her. Louise has a heart condition and that along with her husband stop her from living freely and doing what she wants. She cannot divorce her husband because women in this time were supposed to have a husband, they were thought of as lesser. Women were seen as feeble and weaker than men in the late 19th century. When Louise realizes the silver lining of her husband’s death means she can finally be free of her oppression she is overrun with joy.
It seems as if she is displaying her “sorrows” front of the people. Soon after, she isolated herself, “There stood, facing the open window….She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless”. (Chopin, 115) At this point Louise is taking in all of the news about her husband’s death, which is probably something she has been waiting to hear for years.
In conclusion the title, the "story" refers to that of Louise's life. She lived in the true sense of the word, with the will and freedom to live for only one hour. Only an hour because her husband ruined the
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
“The Story of an Hour” is a great portrayal of how married women felt during the 1870s. This story is a serious representation of how difficult it was to get divorced during that time. Throughout this short story, a woman by the name of Louise Mallard rejoices at the news of her husband’s death. Due to her disappointment of seeing that her husband had not actually passed, Mrs. Mallard dies. One might question why she was overjoyed by that upsetting news; however, she was justified in feeling cheerful. In this story, Mrs. Mallard states numerous times how she felt “free”. Having this mindset after hearing her husband had passed one has reason to believe Mrs. Mallard and her husband’s marriage was not a
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 exploration of symbolism and irony in “The Story of an Hour”, is apparent for the reader to establish. Irony being the opposite of what is intended; Having 3 types of irony they are divided by verbal, dramatic, and situational. Symbolism is any object, person, place, or experience that represents more than what it is.
1. What are fictional stories? 2. Many people will say fictional stories are stories that are not true. 3. Yes, that is correct, but there are many more parts to fiction. 4. Per Kirszner and Mandell, “A work of fiction is a narrative that originates in the imagination of the author rather than in history or fact” (62) 5. Some examples of fiction are poems, epics, and novels. 6. Not all fiction is one hundred percent false, “some fiction focuses on real people and is grounded in actual events, but the way the characters interact, what they say, and how the plot unfolds are largely the author’s invention” (Kirszner and Mandell 62) 7. The plot, the setting, and the point of view of a fictional story are only three
Most stories have more than one conflict, some bigger than others, but all important as a story progressives to the very moment everything clicks and comes together. After that point, the story starts to wind down, lose ends are tied, and the reader gets the satisfying feeling of a happy ending. The Story of an Hour is not your typical short story; but is similar to others in the way that conflicts are the leading force behind a short story. This story starts with Mrs. Mallard finding out any wife’s worst news and realizing it is the best news she has ever heard. Within the short hour of the announcement, the news that was going to save her, ended up killing her. The internal conflicts Mrs. Mallard faces in Chopin’s The Story of an Hour are subtle, but lead to a resolution that makes the reader question if they believe the author or not.
“The story of an Hour” is a basically a story about an inner battle that the main character Louise has to deal with, as she faces living life after her husband Brently has passed away. The story begins with Louise sister Josephine breaking the news of her husband’s death, which was first announced by Richard the family friend. This send an emotionally distressed Louise crying to her room sad at the news of Brentlys death. Once alone Mrs. Mallard started to feel a strange feeling that kept getting greater the more she stared out
“Story of an Hour” uses Louise Mallard’s repressed life as a wife to elucidate how repression can lead to bottled up depression. Louise Mallard understands the “right” way for women to behave, but her internal thoughts and feelings are anything but correct. This is first illustrated by the initial reaction to her husband’s death, where she cries instead of feeling numb, as she suspects other women would do. The death of her husband acts as a catalyst to alleviate her depression that rooted in her marriage. In the beginning of the story we are introduced to Louise’s heart problem, which shows the extent to which she believes her marriage has trapped her. The author of the story gives a vague description of Mallard’s heart condition just simply calling it a “heart problem” (Choplin 452). This vague description shows how her “heart problem” is both physical and
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.
Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour was first published in 1894 (The Story of An Hour). The main theme of this story is oppression and loss of freedom for people, especially when they are married. The oppression happens to both women and men. This theme is demonstrated many times throughout the story. Mrs. Mallard had a weak heart, but when she was told about her husband’s accidental death, she accepted it immediately. The passage in the story is, “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.” Even though Mrs. Mallard had the reputation of being delicate, she was not like other women who denied death and she faced the strong emotions that arose from the news in a straightforward way. She went to her room alone and wanted to deal with her grief by herself.
In spite of all the love they had for one other, and is sad that her husband is now dead, she is excited about the news that she will be free for the first time to do whatever she wanted. Instead of dreading the days ahead without her husband, she looks forward to them (Friedman,
In “The Story of an Hour,” the tragedy that occurs is not the typical tragedy people would take it as. Louise Mallard is a married woman. Most people would try to live a happy marriage, but Louise was not happy in her marriage. She felt like she had no freedom, until her husband died.