Story Of An Hour Literary Analysis Essay

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Dawn of Realization
Analysis of Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”

Everybody has a dawn of realization at some point in their life, whether that be from finally understanding a math problem that you have been struggling with, or finally grasping how simple it is to ride a bike. Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” does just this with our main character Mrs. Mallard, but I wonder what she finally understands?

At the beginning, we assume that Mrs. Mallard is an elderly woman because she has a heart condition and we read that because of her heart condition she is very fragile, so after the news Mrs. Mallard receives from her friend Josephine that her husband is dead; Mrs. Mallard breaks down in tears, and after a few moments she excuses herself and goes upstairs to her room. As she is sitting there in her room, she is looking out the open window and seeing “the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life,” “a peddler crying his wares,” “notes of a distant song...” (12). The window in this scene helps Mrs. Mallard see all the new life from the trees and the birds and the people outside …show more content…

Mallard realizes that she can finally be free and that “there would be no powerful will bending her” (13) as her husband did to her without even meaning to. As society thought this was how things were to be structured. Even with this realization Mrs. Mallard had loved some of her husband even if he was overbearing at times. Mrs. Mallard had an extreme event happen in her life and it truly opened up her eyes to the world that she did not see the previous day. If this event hadn’t happened, Mrs. Mallard would not have known that she wasn’t completely free. When Josephine talks to Mrs. Mallard from the opposite side of the door, she begs her to come out and after finally doing so, Mrs. Mallard and Josephine started heading down the stairs she sees her husband walk in perfectly fine, and we find out that she died of joy of seeing her husband still

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