Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

The Story of an Hour

American author Kate Chopin (1850–1904) wrote two published novels and about a hundred short stories in the 1890s. Most of her best-known work focuses on the lives of sensitive, intelligent women. Her short stories were well received in her own time and were published by some of America's most prestigious magazines, including Vogue and the Atlantic Monthly. Her early novel At Fault (1890) was not much noticed by the public, but The Awakening (1899) was widely condemned by the society in which Kate Chopin lived. Chopin’s short story, “The Story of An Hour,” describes and critiques the lack of freedom that American women in the past; the ways in which marriage can be ironic, and how an hour is enough time to provide the strength and hope needed to believe in an escape from the

First of all, her reaction was ironic: “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance.” Any reader would expect her to be sad or mad for her loss, but it ended up being the opposite. She was happy, not for the loss, but for the benefits she gained from it. Another example of irony is the description of Mrs. Mallard’s room. Chopin uses positive adjectives to describe it: “facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair.” Consequently, this literary style generates a feeling of calm and comfort in the reader. This example is pure irony, as any reader would expect that in a sad context like this story, the room should be described with the intention of creating loneliness, sadness or pain. Finally, this literary device comes back to the scene when Mrs. Mallard dies at the end of the story as the author uses a final irony to describe her death: “...when the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the “joy” that kills ,” the joy of imagining herself imprisoned again (Virginia Commonwealth