Louise Mallard In The Story Of An Hour

In the opening of The Story of an Hour, Louise Mallard is portrayed as a weak and delicate creature. However, she is an intelligent and independent woman who understands her place in society. The author first presents Louise, the protagonist, with a “heart trouble” (par 1). This causes her sister and long-time family friend to tiptoe around her before gently breaking the news of her husband’s death in a train accident. Louise does care for this man, but she cries fast and never denies the fact that he is dead. Most women of the time would not have accepted that he was dead so quickly. Even with her heart affliction and the death of her husband, she grows throughout her story and soon she finds a newfound freedom shortly before it is ripped away.

Louise is described physically, as “young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength” (par 8). To reiterate, she is pale, beautiful, and young, but the lines that the narrator speaks of lead to a conclusion that Louise is keeping something locked away inside; Louise is not content within her marriage. The vagueness of her heart trouble seems to be symbolic in her troubled heart towards her husband. Even though her husband was always kind to her

“And yet she had loved him – sometimes. Often, she had not” (par 15). This “sometimes” love is confusing at best. In a loving relationship, you love the other person even when times are tough. So, the love Louise had for her husband seems to never have existed. “What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!” (par 15). Here self-assertion, the expression of oneself, overshadows any emotion she ever felt towards her husband. The sensation of who she was, who she is, and who she can be is the even stronger than the “unsolved mystery” of love (par