Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

The Story of an Hour

Liberty or Death? Women, Marriage and "The Story of an Hour"

Desmond Kissi

Worcester State University

Author’s Note

This paper was prepared for Professor Stephanie Terrill

Liberty or Death? Women, Marriage and "The Story of an Hour"

Although life for women nowadays is still complex, as the effects of hundreds of years of oppression are not easy to bypass, it is undoubtedly better than it was a century ago. Indeed, at the end of the nineteenth century life for women had many difficulties that would be hard to envision today, as is the case with the short story "The Story of an Hour". This text by America author Kate Chopin discusses the life a married woman who finds out her husband

Mallard's life that is important to consider for a more comprehensive understanding of the story, is her status as an oppressed woman, who faced a life of quiet desperation, confinement, and obedience to her husband. Indeed, of the many themes present in the story, it is fundamental to maintain present Mrs. Mallard life, which was "extremely restricted because of her domestic confinement and also suggests that she must have been secretly yearning for a life of her own"(Chia-Chieh Tseng, 2014, p. 29) . The allure of a life of her own was powerful for Mrs. Mallard because it represented an extreme contrast with her current situation. For the character, one of the most terrible aspects of life with her husband was having to bend her will and forgo her wants: "There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature" (Chopin, 1894). Therefore, Mrs. Mallard character wants to be free, because she feels she is not because she loathed the life marital

Mallard's death, as her story ends in tragedy when she gives up on life. On the text of the story, the end is not clear cut and is left to interpretation as the reader must decide what to believe. It would seem that the last sentence should be enough to settle the matter, as the doctors attributed Mrs. Mallard's death to a "joy that kills", yet it is also possible to offer an alternative explanation (Chopin, 1894). The story establishes Mrs. Mallard's bad health since the beginning, afflicted by heart trouble, and it is that weak heart that kills her but not of joy, but shock at seeing her husband alive. Thus, "we are liable to consider that her death is caused by the great shock and anguish when she learns that her husband is still alive" (Wan, 2009, p. 168). The shock of seeing her husband is not only because she thought of him as a dead person, but because the news Mr. Mallard's survival snatch away her newly-gained freedom. The perspective of going back to a life that she thought was gone, along with a bad heart, killed Mrs. Mallard. Thus, in more than one sense, the characters preferred death than living in