Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

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In Kate Chopin’s short story “The Story of an Hour” Louise Mallard goes through life hoping that there was something different, instead of changing the way she lived. “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” This quote by an American politician Eleanor Roosevelt, represents the way that people should be living their life, but in this short story, Louise does the complete opposite. Louise hears the gut-wrenching news that her husband has just passed away from a train accident, and her heart shatters into pieces. She now realizes that there are new beginnings ahead of her, and she can finally live her life independently. But, when her husband, …show more content…

When Louise found out the tragic news, “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment” (Chopin 27). The illustration of Louise weeping and with wild abandonment shows how much she truly cares about Brently. If Louise didn’t care about her husband there would have been a different reaction to her receiving the news. But, Louise shows more devastation with the simile “when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams” (27). This illustrates that she can’t even think about Brently without sobbing. Both of these scenes show that she loves her husband, and she can’t fathom living without him. Losing a loved one, no matter the person, would be devastating to anyone who goes through it. But, now that Louise no longer has a husband, she now does not have to live with him telling her what she can and cannot do; though Brently is not alive, this goes to show that life can change in the matter of a …show more content…

Her actions contradict what she said or felt about Brently in the beginning. The quote “free, free, free” (Chopin 27), said by Louise is her welcoming in the new life that is ahead of her. Now she can live her own life, doing the things that she more than likely wasn’t able to do when she Brently was alive. But, Louise saying “free free free” isn’t the only thing that shows that she is glad her husband has passed away. “She opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome” (28), also tells the reader that she is ready to take on this new life independently. When both of these lines were said, we know that Louise is glad to be living her own life, doing the things that she never got the chance the

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    Chopin describes her as a fragile woman. Because she was “afflicted with a heart trouble,” when she receives notification of her husband’s passing, “great care was taken” to break the news “as gently as possible” (1). Josephine, her sister, and Richards, her husband’s friend, expect her to be devastated over this news, and they fear that the depression could kill her because of her weak heart. Richards was “in the newspaper office when the intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of killed” (1). He therefore is one of the first people to know about his death. Knowing about Mrs. Mallard’s heart, he realizes that they need to take caution in letting Mrs. Mallard know about it. Josephine told her because Richards feared “any less careful, less tender” person relaying the message to Louise Mallard (1). Because of her heart trouble, they think that if the message of her husband’s death is delivered to her the wrong way, her heart would not be able to withstand it. They also think that if someone practices caution in giving her the message, that, ...

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    ...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.

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