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Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

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Chopin’s short story "The Story of an Hour" was quite interesting because the title suggested that the story happened in an hour time frame. The story started with a narrator saying “Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.”(pg. 278) Richard, a family friend, received a telegram of a train accident earlier that day. On the top of this list was Brently Mallard's name. After confirming it was in fact Mr. Mallard, with a second telegram, Richard asked Josephine to help him break the news to her sister. As one would expect, the recently made widow broke down. When she recovered Louise wished to go to her room. Once in her room …show more content…

Mallard is the main character. She's married to Brently Mallard. Mr. Mallard was believed to be dead at the beginning of the short story. Josephine is the worried sister who helps break the news to Mrs. Mallard. Richard is the family friend that receives the telegram of Bentley's death and helps break the news as well. At the end he tried to block the view of Mrs. Mallard falling over dead in front of her husband. Throughout the entire story we never get a name of the town or a street address. Even without this information, we can still determine that this story takes place in a middle class house in the 1800s. A time when men were still oppressive of woman's right( many rights which women now have today). Knowing the era when this takes place helps us as a reader to understand why Mrs. Mallard reacted to the news of her husband being dead and then alive again. Chopin wrote “The Story of an Hour”, in a way that a person can understand what was going through Mrs. Mallard's mind as the story continued. The sentence structure was different. Commons in areas made you stop ,which, allowed the reader to interpret what was wrote. If the commas and periods were in different places one could easily misinterpret the writing and the meaning. The wording of the story is very formal and lacks the usage of slang words. There is no usage of

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