Kate Chopin's story, "The Story of an Hour", focuses on an 1890's young woman, Louise Mallard. She experienced a profound emotional change after she hears her husband's "death" and her life ends with her tragic discovery that he is actually alive. In this story, the author uses various techniques-settings, symbolism and irony- to demonstrate and develop the theme: Freedom is more important than love.
Chopin uses settings to convey particular moods, character qualities and features of theme. Firstly, the author uses time setting to reveal Louise' inner desire and her restrictions. The entire action happens in the "spring" (Chopin 69) of a year in the 1890's. Spring means hope. But woman are restricted by the society in 1890's. The two time settings create a conflict between Louise's expectation and reality. Secondly, the author uses a lot of place setting. The story happens in the house that belongs to Louise Mallard. Most of the time, the author focus on the upstairs of the house- Louise's bed room and the room is closed. We can see Louise is trapped in her house. Her bed room is the only place that belongs to her. So when she heard about the"death" of her husband, she goes to her upstairs bed room, and close the door. "free, free,
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Firstly, the author uses a closed door as a symbol of separator. The closed door separated her from her sister and her friend. She is free from the surroundings. Although she "wept at once" (69) after her husband's unfortunate, things are changing now. "The open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair" (69) reveals that Louise's true feeling. In the following paragraph, Chopin uses "blue sky" (69) as a sign of hope; twittering "sparrows" (69) as a sign of happiness. The reader can confirm that her husband's death is only a temporary hurdle and she recovers quickly from the grief. Now she looks hopefully to the future, future of independent and well deserved
However, even though Louise is thought to be passionate, it is also suggested that she is somewhat repressed. Chopin tells the reader that Louise's face "Bespeaks repression." The question is why? Louise seems to be a paradox of sorts; she is passionate, but repressed. This leads the reader to wonder if maybe Louise has been controlled or repressed by her husband. A little further in the story, this is confirmed even further by the Louise's later response to her husbands death. Louise begins to become joyful at the thought of being alone. When she begins to feel this joyful free feeling, the word "abandonment" is used suggesting that Louise has felt trapped in some way.
By contrast, Louise Mallard, the protagonist in Chopin's "Story of an Hour", is a moral woman and loving wife, at least by Western standards. Her life is defined by the accepted social ideal of a husband's will as final. She is so inured to this concept that only upon hearing the news of his death does her true feeling of something "too subtle and elusive to name" (199) come forth. What she acknowledges to herself is that her marriage is not happy for her and she often resents her subservient role and "a kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime".
In The Story of an Hour, the main character, Mrs. Louise Mallard, is a young woman with a heart condition who learns of her husband’s untimely death in a railroad disaster. Instinctively weeping as any woman is expected to do upon learning of her husband’s death, she retires to her room to be left alone so she may collect her thoughts. However, the thoughts she collects are somewhat unexpected. Louise is conflicted with the feelings and emotions that are “approaching to possess her...” (Chopin 338). Unexpectedly, joy and happiness consume her with the epiphany she is “free, free, free!” (Chopin 338). Louise becomes more alive with the realization she will no longer be oppressed by the marriage as many women of her day were, and hopes for a long life when only the day prior, “…she had thought with a shudder that life may ...
2 Chopin’s physical and emotional characterization of Louise suggests the woman is experiencing a spiritual encounter that includes the possibility of eternal life. Early in the story, Chopin uses characterization to describe Mrs. Mallard’s physical condition, noting that she has “heart trouble” (12); this description foreshadows her death, [i.e. not eternal life] which will take place later in the store [story]. [Isn't it also symbolic?] The author illustrates that Mrs. Mallard is physically exhausted by writing that when she hears the news of her husband’s supposed death, she sinks into a “comfortable, roomy armchair . . . quite motionless with her head thrown back” (12). Chopin goes on to write that Louise experiences “physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her a soul” (12), which allows the reader to see that something is taking place within her both physically and emotionally. [This paragraph demosntrates that "something is taking place," but not that it relates to eternal life.]
The symbols and imagery used by Kate Chopin's in “The Story of an Hour” give the reader a sense of Mrs. Mallard’s new life appearing before her through her view of an “open window” (para. 4). Louise Mallard experiences what most individuals long for throughout their lives; freedom and happiness. By spending an hour in a “comfortable, roomy armchair” (para.4) in front of an open window, she undergoes a transformation that makes her understand the importance of her freedom. The author's use of Spring time imagery also creates a sense of renewal that captures the author's idea that Mrs. Mallard was set free after the news of her husband's death.
The end of the story is such a tragedy for me because I feel like Louise and I have such a connection. When Louise went down stairs with her sister and witnessed her husband walk through the door, her heart gave out and she died. This event to me is like finally getting to Gainesville and realizing that my parents were still just a phone call away to smother me. Though I can do what I want, it's nothing like how I thought it would be. I love my parents with all my heart, and Louise sometimes loved her husband. The doctors said that Louise died from her heart disease, "Of joy that kills (16, paragraph 23.)" For me that was the tragedy, that again Louise was misunderstood. Though the events in my life are not as painful as Louise Mallards, we are similar in a sense that all we want is to be free and understood.
Written in 1894, “The Story of an Hour” is a story of a woman who, through the erroneously reported death of her husband, experienced true freedom. Both tragic and ironic, the story deals with the boundaries imposed on women by society in the nineteenth century. The author Kate Chopin, like the character in her story, had first-hand experience with the male-dominated society of that time and had experienced the death of her husband at a young age (Internet). The similarity between Kate Chopin and her heroine can only leave us to wonder how much of this story is fiction and how much is personal experience.
Chopin sets the story in the springtime to represent a time of new life and rebirth, which mirrors Louise's discovery of her freedom. Louise immediately takes herself to a room where, "facing the window [sat] a comfortable, roomy armchair" (Chopin 470). The news of her husband's death leaves her feeling lost and confused, seeking answers about her future. In her husband's lifetime, she was "pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach to her soul," but once left alone to gaze out of the open window and to observe the "patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds," she recognizes freedom for the first time (Chopin 470). Initially, she fails to fully comprehend the mysterious yet promising beginning to her new life, but soon welcomes it as, "she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window" (Chopin 471). Getting a glimpse of her life with an absolute and fresh freedom gives her the strength to abandon a life of solitude and to "spread her arms out [. . .] in welcome" (Chopin 471). Just as springtime is a fresh beginning to a new year, Louise's discovery of sovereignty is a hopeful promise to a new life.
“Story of an Hour”, written by Kate Chopin presents a woman of the nineteenth century who is held back by societal constraints. The character, Louise Mallard, is left to believe that her husband has passed away. She quickly falls into a whirlwind of emotions as she sinks into her chair. Soon a sense of freedom overwhelms her body as she looks through the window of opportunity and times to come. She watches the world around her home run free as nature runs its course. Louise watches the blue sky as a rush of “monstrous joy” shoots through her veins (Chopin). She experiences a new sense of freedom. Although she sometimes loved her husband, his “death” breaks the chain that keeps her from experiencing a truly free life. Thoughts over times to
In the story it states, “There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair… She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life” (Chopin 22). Through this quote, Chopin describes two different places that are a part of the same setting. By using the adjective, comfortable, when describing the armchair, Chopin creates a symbol representing her marriage. Then when she uses the adjective new, she creates another symbol representing the start of a new life without her husband. By using these two symbols, Chopin illustrates the new possibilities Louise has now that she is free. Due to the two symbols, and their context in the story Chopin further supports the main idea of the
She has now found a new desire for life. However, without warning, the tone abruptly reverts back to its grief stricken “ horror.” As Mr. Mallard walks in the door, her thoughts, dreams, and aspirations, quickly fade away. Louise’s heart, so weak, simply stops and all bliss transfers into extreme heartache. The drastic changes of tone reveals that freedom can be given and taken from someone in a heartbeat and the heartache will always remain.
The descriptions in the story foreshadow the tragedy that ends the story. The author believed unexpected things happen often. In the case of this story, Louise Mallard believed her husband to be dead, having been told this by her sister, Josephine. However, when it is revealed that her husband had been alive the whole time, she is unhappy to see him and suffers a fatal heart attack. While she did have heart trouble, Richards and Josephine thought that the news of her husband’s death, not her seeing him again would be detrimental to her health, possibly even fatal. Chopin succeeded in getting this message across.
...giving it boundaries and distinctive characteristics about the situation. Setting preys upon reader stereotypes and preconceptions about the certain time frame or location in which the story takes place in order to bring out more meaning. In this work, Chopin develops the story based on the reader's knowledge and understanding of a woman's place in late nineteenth-century America. But the specific setting--the time of year and the structure of the Mallard house--also gives clues to help readers understand Louise and attempt to determine the cause of her death. Louise may die of heart disease, as the doctors say at the end of the story, but setting indicates that the disease was not "joy that kills" (14).
In “The Story of an Hour”, Kate Chopin expresses many themes through her writing. The main themes of this short story are the joy independence brings, the oppression of marriage in nineteenth century America, and how fast life can change.
...egaining her husband and all of the loss of freedom her marriage entails. The line establishes that Louise's heart condition is more of a metaphor for her emotional state than a medical reality.” (Koloski) It is ironic that she accepts the death of her husband and is joyous and free, and then he ends up being alive after she walks out of the room with a sense of power. The ending of The Story of an hour by Kate Chopin implies that maybe the only true resolution of conflict is in death.