Freedom and Independence for All Kate Chopin is the author of many short-stories and novels. Her short story, “The Story of an Hour”, is about a woman named Mrs. Louise Mallard with a fragile heart that suddenly and unexpectedly loses her husband in a train accident. Throughout the story, Mrs. Mallard learns to embrace the accident because for her it meant she finally obtained freedom from her demanding life. Through many emotions and a story changing plot twist, Mrs. Mallard finally rests easy in her new life. Freedom and independence is the theme of “The Story of an Hour” and appears in the story when Mrs. Mallard learns that her husband is in a train accident, when she secludes herself from everyone in her room, and when she learns that …show more content…
Brentley Mallard walks in the door and comes back into Mrs. Mallard’s life. Mrs. Mallard finally decides to leave her bedroom and come back to reality. She grabs her sister, and they begin to descend the stairs when her husband walks through the door. In the story Chopin states, “He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife. When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills” (238). When Mrs. Mallard sees her husband, the dreams of her independence vanish. She could no longer be the independent woman she dreamed of being. She did, however, gain her freedom. Mrs. Mallard dies from “the joy that kills.” This means that she is so overwhelmed with the joy she is feeling that, she can not bare it if it was to be taken away, which it was. With her death, Mrs. Mallard finally obtains her freedom. She no longer needs to be saddened by her life. “Joy that Kills” tells more about this by saying, “Kate Chopin reveals the ecstatic experience of freedom and independence from the domestic oppression of a lifetime, the most intense but short lived ‘joy that kills’” (Tseng 29). In the end, Mrs. Mallard gained the freedom and independence she once longed for, and briefly knew. It is only through death that she really gets to experience …show more content…
When her husband dies, she is granted this freedom, but it only lasts a short amount of time. The news of her husbands’ death is false, and he returns and all her dreams of independence disappear. The theme of the short story is seen all throughout the story and is evident in Mrs. Mallards’ life. From the short amount of time that she mourns her husband, to the flood of emotions she feels when he walks back into her life, freedom and independence stand out. In the end, Mrs. Mallard dies of joy, finally obtaining the missing desire of freedom and independence she has always longed for.
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Writing A Guide for College and Beyond: Fourth Edition, by Lester Faigley, Pearson, 2016.
Rosenblum, Joseph. “The Story of an Hour.” Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition. January 2004, pp. 1-2. EBSCO host, lrcproxy.iccms.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=1fh&AN=103331MSS22289240000309&site=eds-live.
Tseng, Mavis Chia-Chieh. "Joy That Kills": Female Jouissance in Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour." Short Story, vol. 22, no. 2, Fall2014, pp. 29-38. EBSCOhost,