Story Of An Hour Literary Analysis

Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”, is truly a representation of the times during the early 1900s for women. Women’s roles during this time were almost strictly restricted to the tending of the household. The husband would go out and work and provide the money for the family to live on and just simply be the man of the house. For many women, we can assume that this made them feel very insignificant, confined, and even imprisoned. These facts are what Chopin bases her story on while emphasizing the feeling of imprisonment and then release when Louise’s husband dies. However, with these feelings of freedom from her husband being a central idea of the story, Chopin makes a point several times to ensure that the reader knows that her husband was not a bad man, but simply a man

Louise makes her mind up to pack and set out on a new life of adventure and independence. Even though she was in love with her husband rightfully so, the sense of independence outweighed her love for him. The story hints at the fact that he did right by her, however social norms of the time were not enough to satisfy Louise. As she learns of his death earlier in the story, she exclaims “Free! Body and soul free!” As she collected herself and proceeded downstairs from her room back to her sister with the mindset of freedom and a new beginning, the story takes the ironic twist that ultimately shatters all hope for freedom. Her husband then walks in the door unscathed, and unaware of the situation at hand. This surprise shocks Louise to the point of heart failure due to her condition. The seemingly optimistic story ultimately becomes a great example of irony. The mention of the heart condition at the beginning of the story when Josephine was worrying about how to break the news as easily as possible, turned out to be almost an incognito allusion to the ironic twist of fate at the end of the story. Well done Ms. Chopin. Well