Story Of An Hour Tone Analysis

Tone and Irony: The Story of an Hour

In The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin alters the narrator’s tone in order to both provide her character’s ironic thoughts and feelings and to prevent the reader from expecting Mrs. Mallard’s ironic end. This is accomplished through the use of descriptive terms and phrases with strong, emotional connotations. Not only were the descriptive terms used, but what they were used to describe were also indications of shifts in the narrator’s tone. The tone’s color also alters with Mrs. Mallard’s emotional state. The emotional tones are used in order to display Mrs. Mallard’s internal shift from the expected grief associated with losing one’s spouse to the joy that provides the reader with this story’s irony. Emotional tones, however, are not the only tones present.

In order to prevent the reader from expecting the

Mallard’s shift from the expected emotional reaction to her unexpected reaction which lead to her ironic death. Upon hearing of her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard “wept at once” and “went away to her room alone” (3). This reaction presents a grieving, newly widowed woman which is one of several possibilities that are expected, but, after a short time, the narrator’s tone no longer suggests that Mrs. Mallard is grieving which is the first sign of this story’s irony. The narrator begins to comment on things that seem odd, given the tone that was just presented to the reader, such as: “new spring life”, the “breath of rain”, and the “notes of a distant song” which all carry positive connotations (5). The narrator then revisits Mrs. Mallard, who is indulging in a new emotion which she is not sure “if it [is] or [is] not a monstrous joy” (11). While Mrs. Mallard has already had a complete emotional shift, her emotional state continues to