Known for her stories, Kate Chopin portrayed the inner lives of sensitive, daring women in many of her literary works. Because of her concerns about the freedom of women foreshadowed later feminist literacy themes; one such story “The Story of an Hour”. As the title, this story takes place in one hour and mostly revolve around one woman, Louis Mallard, the protagonist who is married to Brently Mallard and subject to him, taught he was dead. The themes of freedom and death are being forecast in a way that gives a reader addition to understanding different from what is already known. In habitual circumstances, death brings sorrow, grievance, sadness, lamentation, and heartbreak. In this story, some of the above feelings are bought up briefly. However, the story demonstrated that death can bring satisfaction, jubilance, alleviation, liveliness, and rejoicing. This vision can be sensed in the symbolic use of death, weakness and the inner conflict the protagonist had that last brought her death.
Women century ago were view differently by society. Chopin initially presents the protagonist Mrs. Mallard Louise, as “afflicted with a heart trouble” (Chopin, 170), giving her instant appearance of weakness, symbolic of how women of the late nineteenth- century and below were viewed; impuissant and frail. This characterization is strengthened when Mrs. Mallard sister informs her of her husband died in “…veiled hints that revealed in half concealing” ( Chopin, 170). Upon apprehending her husband died, “she did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance” ( Chopin,171). Mrs. Mallard didn’t only accept her lost but was able to see prior lost the freedom now accessible to her.
At the beginning of the story, Louise was is portrayed to have ” fair calm face whose lines bespoke repression” ( Chopin 2). This causes the reader to that she is an old woman. However, she is young as one gets to perceive as the story goes on. Regression in this instance expressed how unhappy she was in the marriage and death would liberate her from all this unhappiness and leads her to a new life. When in her room, “Free! , Free! , Free! Escape from her lips signifying she will no longer be oppressed, obeying another person’s rules and commitment to marriage.
Josephine, Mrs. Mallard sister comes to her door, imploring her to come out, warning her that she’ll get sick if she doesn’t. Louise tells her to take leave and envision about all the days and years ahead and desires that she lives long. Then she opens the door where both of them, Josephine and herself walk down the stairs where Richards her husband’s friend was waiting. Great was her surprise when “Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella.” She was disappointed that her fantasy had been crushed and that all she thought about freedom was but a dream.
In conclusion, illustrated, passing need caught a reader’s thoughtfulness regarding insight at that it could intend something unique in relation to what may be recently known. Despite, Louise might have been lamented by her husband’s death, she might have been happier that she might have been set off with a chance to be free. The writer feels that in spite of the fact that demise is a disaster for itself, it can bring a mixture of distress also joy on a specific individual relying upon the thing that the person who died meant to the bereaved.
WORKS CITED
Vans Rys; Meyer; VanderMey; Sebranek.
The College Writer: A Guide to thinking, Writing, and Researching. Sixth Edition. . US: Cengage, 2015 Chapter 16 pages 295.
Chopin, Kate. The Story of an Hour
. New York, NY: Perfection Learning, 2000. Print.
Chopin, Kate, Edmund Wilson & Per Seyersted. The complete works of Kate Chopin. New York, NY: LSU Press, 2006. Print.
HRW
https://my.hrw.com/support/hos/hostpdf/host_text_219.pdf
SparkNotes
www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/the-story-of-an-hour/summary/
Mega Essays
https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/84624.html
http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng104/midtermexamples.htm
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/describe-louises-feelings-upon-death-her-husband-176505
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-mrs-mallard-respond-her-husbands-death-1085193
https://www.katechopin.org/story-hour/
