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Kate Chopin's Short Story Of An Hour

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This short story written by Kate Chopin in 1894, this is when slavery had just been abolished, women at this time didn’t have the right to vote. From the beginning of the story Chopin engages the readers to feel empathy for Mrs. Mallard, taking a stance for freedom. In this paper I will do an analysis of the themes: the uncertainty of time; how our lives can drastically change in as little as an hour, women’s freedom or lack of it, and mortality; the state of being subject to death.
As we all know everything can drastically change in a short amount of time, when Mrs. Mallard first learned of the devastating news of the railroad disaster, and her husband’s passing, she wept, in her sister’s arms. As the protagonist, she did everything in …show more content…

Mallard didn’t come free, she was restricted in many ways feeling like a prisoner in her own home, bond in a marriage she felt trapped in and by her bad heart. Although, she paid a high price to have the freedom of an upper-class married woman, a prestigious status at that time. “She said it over and over under the breath: free, free, free!” (Chopin pg 65). She began to look forward to the years to come, “And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome” (Chopin pg 66). Mrs. Mallard found freedom from her husband’s untimely passing, a new way of life was waiting. While sitting in her room she has new-found freedom, once it arrives she is overjoyed, she now has mental and emotional freedom. “Free! Body and soul free!” (Chopin pg 66) She had now idea that this new-found freedom that had just begun, that she had just begun to look forward to a long life, would be quickly taken away.
Mrs. Mallard had a strange excitement upon learning of her husband passing, she states, “And yet she had loved him – sometimes. Often she had not” (Chopin pg 66). When she walked downstairs and, “Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered…” (Chopin pg 66). “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease- of joy that kills” (Chopin pg 66). Her heart attack is symbolic, representing the loss that she will not be free living the life that she had imagined just an hour

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At the opening of Chopin’s story, the reader is presented with an unremarkable protagonist, whose characteristics — outside of her heart trouble — are left unclear. Instead, the passage focuses on the event surrounding her, her husband’s death. While atypical, this choice is highly symbolic, demonstrating how Mrs. Mallard’s life revolves around her husband — even in death. Correspondingly, it draws attention to the lack of identity of 19th century women, who serve moreso as extensions of their husbands than people in their own right. The protagonist’s bland personality is further highlighted by her stereotypical reaction to her husband’s death, as she devolves into a “storm of grief” (Chopin 3).

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When your heart is merely the image of entrapment and all hope once near is lost, where does your freedom stand with life or death? In Kate Chopin’s text “The Story of an Hour” a woman is presented with what appears to be the death of her husband. She explores the world through the eyes of a free woman who was once oppressed. Despite the seeming emphasis on mrs. mallards grief and affliction with her husband's death, a closer look at the author's word choice and imagery describing mrs.mallard reaction leads us to see that she was more afflicted with her new sense of freedom rather than her grief for husband. We begin to understand the opposition of despair and hope.

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Mallard. The two true themes of this story are loss and irony and Mrs. Mallard embodies both of these. The theme of loss is littered throughout this story; first Mrs. Mallard thinks that she has lost her husband; second she finds out that she has lost her new freedom, and finally Mr. Mallard loses his husband. While many readers may see Mrs. Mallard’s death as the greatest loss, Chopin’s writing suggests that it is instead the loss of new life that Mrs. Mallard has so quickly discovered. She had her entire new life planned out, and it all came crashing down within an hour.

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Chopin also describes Mrs. Mallard as “young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength”. At the beginning Mrs. Mallard is thought of as being controlled, and weak. In the 19th Century, when this story was written, husbands controlled their wives. Perhaps Mrs. Mallard wasn’t like most women of her time. After she hears of her husband’s death she morns for what feels like only a moment.

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Mallard reaches a sense of exuberant liberation. She is overwhelmed with feelings of a newfound freedom. Chopin illustrates this burst of hope once again through nature imagery when she writes, “But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air”(Chopin 237). Though Mrs. Mallard tries, she cannot fight the growing sense of freedom that overtakes her. Chopin writes this change as a powerful realization that Mrs. Mallard cannot help but accept.

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Mallard as a character by supplying the reader with a background knowledge of her heart disease. Imagery also helps to convey the theme of freedom used in the story. Freedom is displayed when Mrs.Mallard is yelling “free, free, free!” (7). Lastly, imagery is used to display irony in the fact that Mrs. Mallard dies of “heart disease - joy that kills” (8). In conclusion, Kate Chopin uses imagery to show that the news of a death is easily broken to someone afflicted with heart disease, a feeling of freedom is experienced by someone who just lost their husband and “Heart disease- of joy that

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Kate Chopin wrote a story about Mrs. Mallard, a married woman who suffers from heart problems and also has to cope with her husband recent passing. Mrs.Mallard, she showed sincere grief about her husband passing. However, looking back at how controlling her husband Mr.Mallard were in their marriage, Mrs.Mallard felt a sudden joy when processing her husband death After her sudden emotional change, Mrs Mallard felt liberated when she started thinking about what her life would be like without Mr.Mallard, but regardless of the happiness she feels, she knows that once she sees her husband in corpse that sadness will return. Through her writing, author Chopin readers/ audience would be women who feel trapped and controlled in their marriage. Anger, loneliness and heartbroken are feelings that women who're coping with the death of their loved one feel.

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