"Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin

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Story of an Hour “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin, is about a character, Louise Mallard, who was in a loveless marriage, and her life was dull. Louise yearned for a better life, and she came to realize that because of her husband's death; she had her independence and could spend her life without the invisible chains of a trapped marriage. The author, Kate Chopin uses imagery and describes in detail of the characters' recognition of her freedom and possibilities of a new life for herself. At first, Louise Mallard felt a slight pain of grief from her husband's death, but she saw his death as a new lease on life. Chopin describes Louise as not perceiving her husband's death as society expected her to, "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance" (Chopin, 1894). Chopin showed Louise's short-lived grief of her husband's death as, "[s]he wept with sudden wild abandonment, and when the storm of grief had spent itself, she went away to her room alone"( Chopin, 1894, para.3). Louise openly showed grief, but retreated to her room to be alone to hide her true feelings. Kate Chopin used imagery and the senses of sight, sound, and smell to describe how Louise started to come alive; she could see "[t]he tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life and the clouds with patches of blue sky." She heard "[t]he sounds of a peddler calling out his wares from the streets below, a distant song of someone singing faintly, and sparrows twittering in the eaves." She could smell "[a] delicious breath of rain in the air" (Chopin, 1894, para.5). Her life was now fresh like the start of spring. Chopin describes how the effects of Louise's marriage had taken its toll on her physically, "[s]he was young and fair, but she had aged, and the lines in her face showed her repression, it had left a dull
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