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Story Of An Hour Literary Analysis

877 Words4 Pages

There are several ways to interpret and analyze this short story and apply each of the four styles of criticism. Strong feminist themes appear throughout, but the other themes of mortality, the need for a sense of self and a yearning for freedom have their roles in examining the formalist aspect. Like any effective tragedy, this story is bitter- sweet and can bring a character to the greatest heights before fate takes it away and brings that person down to the lowest point. Chopin’s life and the culture around her had a definite influence on her writing, using the philosophies created by the naturalist movement to portray what would be the last hour of a young, frail woman’s life.
Naturalism is a style of literature based on chaos and believes that nature is an uncaring and indifferent force that is beyond the characters control and works against them as they fight their fates. Unlike its counterparts such as Romanticism, this style used principles based on scientific method instead of idealism to portray themes of survival and determination. These authors focused on taboos and the dark side of human behavior or as …show more content…

While the other characters tread lightly because they knew “that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble” (Chopin 352), Louise lets herself become overwhelmed with emotion despite this. We also come to know and understand her true nature and desires through this struggle, in her guilt for not feeling guilty enough about her husband’s supposed death and the joy in the freedom of suddenly becoming a widow. This mentality considering the time period of the story would seem unrealistic and foolish. Either way, Chopin destroys any romantic nature about marriage as she “implicitly questions the institution of marriage, perhaps as a by-product or her scientific questioning of mores, but she does so in a cleverly tempered way”

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Unsurprisingly, this article discusses the emotions in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour.” S.S. Jamil shows the irony in stereotyping women as overemotional, when the conventional roles Louise Mallard lives in force her to suppress her emotions. Jamil suggests that this is the cause of Louise’s heart trouble, since psychological health does affect physical health. The self-assertion that Louise discovers is permission to be herself, since emotions are a substantial part of who we are. The narrative of this article paints Louise as the victim and society as the culprit.

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The story I chose to explain the use of symbols in is, The Story of an Hour, by Kate Chopin. It is a very short story but gave a lot of details that helped the short story worthwhile. The story starts off with an older woman named Louise who suffers from heart trouble; this heart trouble can be seen as a beginning symbol in the story. There is no in depth detail as to what kind of heart trouble the woman suffers from so the story explores many options, the biggest being how her heart will react to her husbands possible death. The story examines the reality of her new found freedom that her heart will feel if her husband was dead.

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Louise’s victory in accepting her husband’s death is a feeling that she now cannot live without. The ultimate death of Louise Mallard is one that represents physical and emotional defeat. In this dramatic short story, Chopin uses imagery to sew together a tapestry of emotions all encompassed in an ill-stricken widow. Works Cited Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.”

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The author takes the reader through a series of grieving by the wife who has been left by her husband. Unexpectedly, the grieving widow is celebrating the news of her husband’s demise as it sets her free (Chopin, 2017). At the beginning of the story, the two people who want to convey the news of the husband’s death are at pain to break the news fearing that the wife may collapse due to heart problems. However, the wife seems happy with her husband’s death and even starts to imagine how sweet life would be without the husband. The author catches the reader’s imagination through Mrs. Mallard by explaining how she will get her life back after the death of the husband in a humorous manner.

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