Also Richards her husband’s friend; who was one of the first to hear of Brently’s death, took the time to clarify the news and made sure that no one else would convey the gloomy message (Chopin, 2011, para. 2). This showed that Mrs. Mallard was so poor in health that if she got the news in an improper tone or from someone that wasn’t very close to her could have caused her to pass away. This also shows that the other characters thought that Mrs. Mallard was so sick that she couldn’t handle the news and wanted to protect her in a time of sorrow. The narrator’s words give a great portrayal of the relationship between the false news and how Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts formed.
ENGL220 Assignment 1 MINJI KIM Setting in the late nineteenth century, Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour illustrates a woman’s emotional changes after she heard of her husband’s death. Although it is written long before and it is just a short portrayal of an emotional repression of a woman of that time, The Story of an Hour still is a thought-provoking story even for the contemporary readers. Louise, who has heart problem, is carefully told that her husband, Brently, is killed in a railroad accident. She goes upstairs to her room sobbing. Looking outside the open window, she feels the spring air, and suddenly feels the unexpected joy.
When just glancing over this you may think that in saying she has heart trouble, it is actually telling you she has heart disease or something close to it. But, in fact Chopin wants her readers to know that Mrs. Mallard “has a very specific condition that interferes with the workings of her heart” (Hicks). As we read on we later realize that her heart condition being described is that her marriage hasn’t allowed her to “live for herself” (Chopin 15). Crying is part of her life with Mr. Mallard, but soon disappears as she becomes an independent woman. Mrs. Mallard cries for almost the whole story, only stopping when her new freedom crosses her mind.
This quote is a paradox because while reading this the reader can apprehend that the unintended meeting was not as bad as it should have been. The one thing that is keeping the true lovers apart is the family feud (Montague’s and the Capulet’s) that’s been going on for many years. But Romeo and Juliet don’t care and later on they go against their families and get married. Tybat (Juliet’s cousin) was killed and Juliet’s parents think that it was the reason she committed suicide. As soon as the nurse finds out that Tybalt is dead her reaction is very troubling and she doesn’t exactly know how to break it to Juliet so at the end result she says, “Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished; Romeo that kill’d him, he is banished.” (3.2.69-70).
Although Mrs. Mallard loved her husband the overwhelming thought of a life without him brought about emotions that she had buried inside which was a sense of freedom. The theme of this story comes together as Mrs. Mallard descends to her room to be alone. Mrs. Mallard was a sickly women afflicted with heart trouble. Her ailment was known to her family and friends. When the word come down that her husband had been in a train accident and feared dead her family and friends knew to break the news to her as easily as they possibly could.
The story tells us that he was away from the accident and didn’t know it happened. He came home to find that his wife had died from her heart disease, She was so overjoyed by what had happened, I’m guessing his
Great care was taken to tell Louise Mallard, who has a heart problem, of her husband’s death, Brently Mallard, during a railroad disaster. It was her sister Josephine, with Brently’s friend, Richards standing there for support, who gave Louise the news of her husband’s death, she immediately started to weep. “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, paralyzed inability to accept its significance.” (p. 15) Upon receiving the news, Louise is thrown into a downward spiral of her emotions. “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms.”(p. 15) After she was done grieving in her sister arms, Louise went upstairs and locked herself in her room and immediately began mourning the loss of husband. She went over to a comfortable armchair and sank down into it.
The author also relates the theme of the forbidden pleasure of independence in her short story with her use of dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when the reader knows something that the characters don’t. For instance, the reader knew in the last few chapters that Brently Mallard was alive and that Mrs. Mallard’s dreams of being free were nothing but dreams. Yet the characters didn’t know, they only knew the information given to them by Richards which was that Mr. Mallard had passed away in an accident at work. Another example Kate Chopin uses of dramatic irony is throughout the whole short story.
Some people would disagree with the fact that a husband does not have to be faithful to his wife but a woman has to be faithful to her husband or else she could be punished. It is most likely going to be a feminist who disagrees with this because men and women are equal, there is not one of them that is superior to the other. There was also a difference in a woman’s work requirements based on the class they were in or what class their husband was in. A high class woman’s day was very different to that of a poorer woman’s day. Towards the end of the Victorian Era times were beginning to change but were not close to being what they are today.
Another example of how Thomas Hardy makes us feel Sympathy towards Sophy is on page 50 , ” Her foot never regained its natural strength after the accident”. This makes us feel sorry for Sophy because her foot had never regained its strength after the accident and she is now crippled. After Sophy’s husband died , she was very lonely and felt depressed. She met Sam Hobson , a man who proposed to her before her marriage and had asked her to marry him once again. But she could not accept, because her son did not allow it.