The Heartache of Mrs. Mallard While reading “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin the reader is exposed to an internal conflict. Mrs. Mallard, the protagonist, deals with the heartache of believing her husband is dead and then in the span of a few minutes the heartache of losing her freedom. The internal conflict that Mrs. Mallard is dealing with leads to her death. A heart problem and untimely event being the cause of her short life. Mrs. Mallard deals with the death of her husband and the aspect of having her freedom. Grief and freedom are Mrs. Mallard's internal conflicts and through the short story the reader is exposed to the narrator's emotions. The story begins with the assumed death of Mr. Mallard. It is stated that Mrs. Mallard …show more content…
Mallard is on his way home. Mrs. Mallard is still upstairs and unaware of her husband being alive. Ready to start her new independent life she walks down the stairs. As Mrs. Mallard reaches the bottom of the stairs in walks Mr. Mallard. This is where the foreshadowed heart problems tie into the stories. Mrs. Mallard upon seeing her husband collapses and dies. No one knows Mrs. Mallard's true feelings so they believe she dies from the “joy that kills” (Chopin, 280). When the truth is she dies because she no longer has her freedom. Mrs. Mallard had become attached to the idea of freedom and a new way of living. Now that she knows her husband is alive her life has to go back to the way it was before. Mrs. Mallard does not want to live a caged life and doesn’t want to give up her new free life that she had for a few moments. The shock of being married again and living for another person was to much for her to handle. Insead she died and is now free from all obligations. Mrs. Mallard's end was satisfying because she no longer had to live a life were she was unhappy. The conflict was resolved by taking away any choice. After the shock of her husband and the realization that she had lost her freedom, Mrs. Mallard no longer had any conflicting thoughts because she was