Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

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In the novel, “The Story of An Hour”, written by Kate Chopin in 1894, she describes a woman who lets her emotions cause her own death. Chopin’s story describes how a marriage, even the most loving one, can be oppressive. She focuses on feminist issues, how relationships can be all about power. “The Story of An Hour” can be seen as a husband taking control over his wife, which leads to the emotional oppression she feels. Throughout the story, Chopin conveys multiple symbols to further on portraying the wife’s oppression for her husband; the main symbols that help interpret this are heart trouble and the open window. These main symbols represent her feelings of freedom, confinement and happiness.
Louise Mallard suffers from heart problems, therefore, her sister Josephine takes that into consideration before telling her about her husband Brentley Mallards death. Josephine breaks the news to her as gently as possible about his death and mentions to her that his name was found in the newspaper underneath the list of the dead people. Mrs. Mallard begins to cry and decides …show more content…

Mallard represents her emotions towards her marriage, the lack of happiness and freedom she experiences with her husband. In addition, the open window from which Louise gazes represents freedom, happiness and future opportunities that await her after husband’s death. Overall, a person with heart trouble would not be able to deal well with bad or surprising news out of the nowhere. Therefore, as Mr. Mallard walks inside, her heart breaks in pieces, the loss of her joy of independency and freedom brought death to her life. She saw her life finally being completely hers and with the return of her husband, her independence is taken away, her joy disappears, but the bad news is enough to kill her. Mrs. Mallard loves her husband but she is not happy with the person she is with him, her freedom, independency, and happiness is taken away from her by her own

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