The Story of an Hour As the title puts it, “The Story of an Hour” is a story that happens in one hour. This story mostly revolves around one woman, Louise Mallard. The story begins on a very sad note especially in the eyes of a reader. Mrs. Mallard is said to have a “heart trouble” (Chopin 1), so her sister Josephine felt that great care had to be taken when delivering the sad news of her husband Brently Mallard’s death. Upon the delivery of the news, she starts sobbing and grieving then goes to her room to be by herself.
As can be inferred, her heart is a major hindrance in their lives, and is constantly needing attention. Another role the heart plays in the story is Mrs. Mallard’s liberation. She feels oppressed by her marriage and her husband, and wants to live for herself. When she goes to the room by herself and sits in the large, comfortable chair, she whispers to herself, “Free! Body and soul, free!.” This shows that she feels like her heart, her soul, is trapped by her marriage, and with the news of the death of her husband, she is first filled with grief, because she did love him, but later with glee when she realizes that she is free.
The feeling, however, shifts because she begins to be happy about her husband’s death. She thinks she will be able to enjoy the freedom that she had lost in the marriage. Her hope is then ruined by the subsequent news of Mr. Mallard’s survival. The story describes the change of Mrs. Mallard’s reaction and emotion within a single hour. In the short fiction, Chopin explores her belief that marriage and freedom cannot exist together by using two powerful ironies: situational irony and dramatic irony.
In addition, we know she is fragile when we are told, “great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death”(Chopin 573). In my opinion, Louise’s marriage was bringing her down and making her character feel old. Again, I feel sympathy for Louise due to the struggles she had with herself and her marriage. Chopin portrays Louise as a prisoner of her husband. This was not strange at the time Chopin was writing the story.
She mourned of her husband’s passing but as she went up the flight of stairs into her room, Mrs. Mallard came to realize of her newfound freedom. She soon relished her liberation from her marriage to her husband Brently. Such freedom was short-lived, and as she her eyes caught sight of her husband’s entrance into the house, her heart gave way and she died. The two women do indeed share some similarities, but also at the same time show various differences that make their respective situations unique. Among the similarities between Calixta and Mrs. Mallard are the conditions of their marriages around the time of the stories: Calixta to Bobinot and Mrs. Mallard with Brently Mallard.
Which both the wives and husbands were forced to marry, without loving each other. “She lay stone-still (line 6-7)”, means that her marriage had killed part of who she was because she was displeased with her marriage. Another literary device that is used in this poetic sequence is metaphor, “the strange low sobs that shook their common bed (line 3)”. Since they were probably forced to marry, they probably forced to have sexual relationships, which was why the wife would cry in their bed. Another example of metaphor would be, “drink the pale drug of silence (line10)”, which would mean that she is suffering and that she has to suffer quietly, no one much know that suffers in this marriage.
Mr. Richards was in the newspaper office when he heard the news of the railroad disaster. Josephine started to break the news gently to her sister Mrs. Mallard. After Mrs. Mallard heard the news of her husband’s death; she didn’t react the way you think that she would. Instead of her having that paralyzed inability to accept his death she just wept. The grief she was feeling overcame her and she went to her room to be alone.
However, she did not want this love and affection. She felt trapped, and only living in relation to him. Mrs. Mallard was torn down by an emotional and physical heart condition and her duty as a woman to be married. Living the life she was supposed to live, Mrs. Mallard knew the proper way to behave. When she is notified of Bently’s death, she automatically begins to hysterically cry without feeling numb.
Due to the droopiness of her eyes we can conclude that her continuous waterfall of tears and loss of sleep disfigured the woman’s face to the point where she looks unrecognizable, but still we can clearly see that this woman is distraught. “Why is this woman crying,” one may ask themselves when first viewing the picture. Perhaps she’s lost a son or brother to something great. Could she be crying because she’s the target of her peers and now believes she has no self-worth? Is this woman crying because all she wants is a sense of belongingness or is she indeed a victim of something she has no control over?
Mrs. Mallard went through a range of emotions such as grief, a feeling of comfort, and despair. The first range of emotion is grief. Mrs. Mallard had been abruptly hit with the news of her husband, Mr. Mallards’, death by her sister Josephine. She had been totally grief struck by the news. “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment,