There are always two sides to every story. Sorrow versus happiness; two different emotions, but can be expressed very similarly. There are tears of sorrow and happiness, they look the same, but are two completely different emotions. In “The Story of an Hour”, Louise Mallard feels both, but at different points of time than we would expect. Mrs. Mallard did not love her husband, but had to pretend she did. First of all, when her sister and husband’s friend told her the news, she appeared to be sorrowful, but infact she was overjoyed. “She did not stop to ask if it were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted understanding enabled her the suggestion as trivial”. Every cry that exited Mrs. Mallard’s body was the happiness of being …show more content…
freed from her husband. The joy overtook her body, and all she could do was let every tear fall and every exhale escape. As much as her sister and the friend thought she was showing her grief, she was showing her happiness. As much as she was overjoyed about her husband’s death, she was also felt free.
“Free! Body and soul free! She kept whispering”. Not once did she ever seem to acknowledge the fact she has to deal with all the burdens of a “loved” one’s death. She only felt the immense feeling of freedom. She now had no one to live for but herself, and that made her so overjoyed. Through her expression of the emotions escaping through her body, her sister thought it was sorrow not happiness that possessed her sister. “Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring her to let her in. Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door- you will make yourself ill.” Mrs. Mallard was not making herself ill at all, but infact was taking all her newly found freedom. Somethings are too good to be true, and that was exactly what occurred. Mrs. Mallard was met with an awful truth, her husband had not died in the train crash. Her emotions completely crashed down, and all the pressure made her heart disease finally take its toll. As soon as he entered the door, her heart stopped for the shock and pain. “The doctors came they said she had died of heart disease- of the joy that kills”. But, it was not joy she felt, rather extremely strong and sharp pain of her happiness party crashing down around
her. She never had once felt sorrow for her husband, but because of the way she expressed her joy, everyone thought she was grieving. There are mountains and valleys in life, and in Mrs. Mallard’s case, she ran right off a high cliff. As much as many people would like to believe, she never had truly loved her husband at all. Maybe it was physical attraction or maybe it was his wealth, we will never know. The only true fact is that she never loved her husband, and her happiness is what truly killed her. But, her happiness was about what we would least expect.
Why would a married woman go out, spend the night with a man whom she barely knows, when she has a wonderful, devoted husband and child? Mrs. Mallard's cry of ultimate relief and the joy she felt when she learned of her husband's deathis intolerable.
They hear the key turning in the front door and Mr. Mallard walks in the door. He was not on the train that he was always on, so he did not die, and it was only speculation from Richards that he had died. Mrs. Mallard was in shock when she saw her ‘dead’ husband walk through the door, and she died right then and there. The doctors said that she died from the “joy that kills”(Pg. 280). But it seems that is not true because she became glad that her husband had passed
Mrs. Mallard’s repressed married life is a secret that she keeps to herself. She is not open and honest with her sister Josephine who has shown nothing but concern. This is clearly evident in the great care that her sister and husband’s friend Richard show to break the news of her husband’s tragic death as gently as they can. They think that she is so much in love with him that hearing the news of his death would aggravate her poor heart condition and lead to death. Little do they know that she did not love him dearly at all and in fact took the news in a very positive way, opening her arms to welcome a new life without her husband. This can be seen in the fact that when she storms into her room and her focus shifts drastically from that of her husband’s death to nature that is symbolic of new life and possibilities awaiting her. Her senses came to life; they come alive to the beauty in the nature. Her eyes could reach the vastness of the sky; she could smell the delicious breath of rain in the air; and ears became attentive to a song f...
Louise Mallard has not yet heard the news of her husband’s death. As the news is revealed to her she went into a state of unhappiness, and she had a hard time “accepting the significance” (463). She “wept at once” with “wild abandonment” and the “storm of grief” (463), passed over and she went alone to her bedroom with no one to follow her. The author describes in the previous sentence that the storm of grief has passed over her,
The story begins on a very sad note especially in the eyes of a reader. Mrs. Mallard is said to have a “heart
3 The author also describes Mrs. Mallard as feeling “young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength” (12)-- the strength of God. [What suggests that it is the strength of God, and not just a personal strength of her own?] From the statement “now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously” (12), the reader can sens...
Mrs. Mallard is an ill woman who is “afflicted with heart trouble” and had to be told very carefully by her sister and husband’s friend that her husband had died (1609). Her illness can be concluded to have been brought upon her by her marriage. She was under a great amount of stress from her unwillingness to be a part of the relationship. Before her marriage, she had a youthful glow, but now “there was a dull stare in her eyes” (1610). Being married to Mr. Mallard stifled the joy of life that she once had. When she realizes the implications of her husband’s death, she exclaims “Free! Body and soul free!” (1610). She feels as though a weight has been lifted off her shoulders and instead of grieving for him, she rejoices for herself. His death is seen as the beginn...
Her sister, Josephine, broke the news to her “in broken sentences, veiled hints that revealed in half concealing”. After hearing of her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard locks herself in her room to mourn. She sits in a chair facing an open window and begins to sob. As she sat gazing at an open patch of blue sky, a thought started to come to her. “Free, free, free!” escapes her lips.
Freedom is what motivates Mrs. Mallard to be happy with her husband’s death. She is fighting her feeling for her freedom because she has not had freedom at all, rather she was suffering from emotional and physical abuse. However, it was a false rumor htat her husband was dead and as soon as she sees him as she was stepping down the stairs, she passed away. This is because she knows that her freedom and her joyful future is being take naway. Mrs. Mallard’s craving or freedom shows that she was abused in her
Mrs. Mallard was at first overjoyed with freedom because her husband was supposedly “dead,” yet at the end of the story, Mrs. Mallard comes face to face with Mr. Mallard. A whole new wave of emotions overcame Mrs. Mallard as she laid eyes on her husband instantly killing her from “a heart disease-of joy that kills.” It is ironic how Mrs. Mallard is overjoyed about her husband’s death, and she ended up dying because she found out he was alive instead. Her joy literally was killed, killing her on the inside as
Mallard’s emotions over the presumed death of her husband. The author used both dramatic and situational irony to mislead the reader and surprise them with a plot twist ending. By utilizing both external and internal conflict the author expresses the internal debate of Mrs. Mallard’s true feelings and those of the people around her. The author used symbolism to display Mrs. Mallard’s desire for freedom from her marriage. In the end it was not joy that killed Mrs. Mallard but the realization that she lost her
The main character in this story, Louise Mallard shows us her dream of freedom and proves these people wrong when her husband, Brently Mallard, dies. Louise’s husband was on a list of people that died in a railroad disaster. They tell her carefully since she has a heart condition. She starts crying, but afterwards she begins to think of all the positive things that come from his death. Her sister, Josephine goes upstairs to make sure she is okay,and once she finds out she is they come down. As they walk down the stairs she sees the door being opened and her husband comes in. Having her heart condition, she dies. The doctors thought “she had died from heart disease-of joy that kills.” However, she didn't die from the joy of getting to see her living husband but from losing her future filled with freedom.
In the story the plot was twisted around. Mrs. Mallard has heart problems and when she learns that her husband has been killed and she was really sad, but when her sister left, she thought to herself and felt happy. She then said “free, free, free!” However, her husband opens the door and when she sees him her heart pumped too fast because it pushed over the top with joy, but in my mind, I believe she died because it was so much grief knowing he was still alive. Therefore, in many stories the plot can become twisted and the outcome can change drastically.
In The story of an Hour, Kate Chopin reveals catastrophic news of a railroad disaster slaying Brently Mallard and its dire consequences on his wife Louise Mallard. Mrs. Mallard was a young woman oppressed by heart disease. Brently Mallard’s friend, Richards wished the news of her husband’s death to be tenderly delivered, so the task befell her sister Josephine. I will argue that the monstrous consequences of grief led to Louise Mallard’s sudden death, unlike Mary E. Papke who contends that unless a woman denies herself and live a lie, the result would be her death.
The first reader has a guided perspective of the text that one would expect from a person who has never studied the short story; however the reader makes some valid points which enhance what is thought to be a guided knowledge of the text. The author describes Mrs. Mallard as a woman who seems to be the "victim" of an overbearing but occasionally loving husband. Being told of her husband's death, "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance." (This shows that she is not totally locked into marriage as most women in her time). Although "she had loved him--sometimes," she automatically does not want to accept, blindly, the situation of being controlled by her husband. The reader identified Mrs. Mallard as not being a "one-dimensional, clone-like woman having a predictable, adequate emotional response for every life condition." In fact the reader believed that Mrs. Mallard had the exact opposite response to the death her husband because finally, she recognizes the freedom she has desired for a long time and it overcomes her sorrow. "Free! Body and soul free! She kept whispering." We can see that the reader got this idea form this particular phrase in the story because it illuminates the idea of her sorrow tuning to happiness.