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Character analysis of a story of an hour
Character analysis of a story of an hour
Character analysis of a story of an hour
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Although marriage is considered a lifelong bond in “The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin uses the open window to symbolize Louise’s new life to come. Throughout her life she secretly lived a mournful life. Louise had been fooled by her marriage life. In fact, only minutes after Josephine tells her about Brentley’s tragic death she reconsiders her previous feelings. Louise reconsidered her speculation of their marriage life and had second thoughts on how she felt about Brently, “And yet she loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, unsolved mystery, count for in the face of possession of self-assertion, which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of being her” (Chopin 2). Regardless of the fact that
Jamal states: “I was wondering if I could bring you more of my stuff. Or maybe I could write something else.” Forrester responds: “How about 5,000 words on why you should stay out of my house!” (IMDb, 2017) This is the first impression Jamal, a black sixteen year old, has of The Window, an old white man who appears to watch people outside his window.
Marriage is an important theme in the stories Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin. When someone hears the word “marriage”, he thinks of love and protection, but Hurston and Chopin see that differently. According to them, women are trapped in their marriage and they don’t know how to get out of it, so they use language devices to prove their points. Chopin uses personification to show Mrs. Mallard's attitudes towards her husband's death. Louise is mournful in her room alone and she is giving a description of the nature as a scene of her enjoying “the new spring life” and “the delicious breath of rain was in the air” (Chopin1).
In The Story of an Hour, the main character, Mrs. Louise Mallard, is a young woman with a heart condition who learns of her husband’s untimely death in a railroad disaster. Instinctively weeping as any woman is expected to do upon learning of her husband’s death, she retires to her room to be left alone so she may collect her thoughts. However, the thoughts she collects are somewhat unexpected. Louise is conflicted with the feelings and emotions that are “approaching to possess her...” (Chopin 338). Unexpectedly, joy and happiness consume her with the epiphany she is “free, free, free!” (Chopin 338). Louise becomes more alive with the realization she will no longer be oppressed by the marriage as many women of her day were, and hopes for a long life when only the day prior, “…she had thought with a shudder that life may ...
The narrator is confined to a room with strange wall-paper. This odd wall-paper seems to symbolize the complexity and confusion in her life. In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard must also deal with conflict as she must deal with the death of her spouse. At first there is grief, but then there is the recognition that she will be free. The institute of marriage ties the two women of these two short stories together. Like typical young women of the late 19th century, they were married, and during the course of their lives, they were expected to stay married. Unlike today where divorce is commonplace, marriage was a very holy bond and divorce was taboo. This tight bond of marriage caused tension in these two characters. Their personal freedom was severely restricted. For Mrs. Mallard, marriage was a curse to be reckoned with. She knew inside that her marriage was wrong, but she could not express her feelings openly. Her husband was not a bad man, but he was in the way. After hearing about her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard comments, “now there would be no powerful will bending her in that blind persistence with which men … believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature” (Chopin 72), Her husband definitely was a thorn in her
Berkove concluded his essay by stating that the things Louise simply desired was impossible to have. He also says he thinks the character was immature and an egotistical. The story was never about marriage but about irony. The interpretation of "The Story of an Hour" "Chopin projects irony of what would happen if an Immature and shallow egotist were to face the earthly consequences of an impossible dream of hers afflicted heart."(158).
Marriage can be seen as a subtle form of oppression, like many things which are dictated by social expectations. In Kate Chopin’s The Story of An Hour, Louise Mallard finds herself in distress due to the event of her husband’s death that makes her question who she is as a person. The author cleverly uses this event to create the right atmosphere for Mrs. Mallard to fight against her own mind. As the short story progresses, we see that Mrs. Mallard moves forward with her new life and finds peace in her decision to live for herself. This shows that marriage too is another chain that holds oneself back. Not wanting to admit this to herself, Louise
In the beginning of "The Story of an Hour," Mrs. Mallard is just a typical wife. It is not until she hears of her husband's death that she then simply becomes Louise, now an individual, no longer overshadowed by her husband. Following her husband's death, Louise feels she will no longer suffer a "powerful will bending her" (14), thus indicating she had lacked a voice in the marriage. Chopin clearly indicates this lack of freedom and individuality in Louise's marriage stating, "[. . .] that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature." (14). This statement reflects how men and women oppress each other, denying one another freedom and a sense of identity. This is in line with the common view that women lost their individuality because their, "legal existence had been extinguished by the status of marriage." (Robson). Next, we learn that Louise actually begins to accept, even enjoy the notion of a life by herself, as Chopin writes the years "that would belong to her absolutely [. . .] she would live for herself." (14). Louise woul...
Kate Chopin was a Victorian writer; whose writing manifests her life experiences. She was not happy with the principles of the time, because women had fewer rights, and they were not considered equal to men. Afraid of segregation from society, people lived in a hypocritical world full of lies; moreover, Kate Chopin was not afraid of segregation, and used her writing as a weapon against oppression of the soul. Marriage was an oppressor to Chopin, she had been a victim of this institution. Being a victim of marriage, Chopin's "Story of an Hour," is an expression of her believe that, marriage is an institution that oppresses, represses, and is a source of discontent among human beings.
This short story is very short, but there was something about it that made me
Short Story Analysis “The Story of the Hour” by Kate Chopin portrays an opposing perspective of marriage by presenting the reader with a woman who is somewhat untroubled by her husband's death. The main character, Mrs. Louise Mallard, encounters the sense of freedom rather than sorrow after she got knowledge of her husband's death. After she learns that her husband, Brently, is still alive, it causes her to have a heart attack and die. Even though “The Story of the Hour” was published in the eighteen hundreds, the views of marriage in the story could coincide with this era as well. Louise is trapped in her marriage.
Kate Chopin provides her reader with an enormous amount of information in just a few short pages through her short story, “The Story of an Hour.” The protagonist, Louise Mallard, realizes the many faults in romantic relationships and marriages in her epiphany. “Great care [is] taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death” (Chopin 168). Little do Josephine and Richards know, the news will have a profoundly positive effect on Louise, rather than a negative one. “When she abandoned herself,” Mrs. Mallard opened her mind to a new way of life.
Upon coming to the realization that her husband did not die in a tragic railroad incident as she was told by her sister Josephine and her husband’s friend Richards, in the most delicate manner due to her heart troubles, Mrs. Mallard dies suffering from a heart attack. The doctors claim that the cause of her heart attack was from a “joy that kills”(Chopin, Page 3). Throughout this short story, the author Kate Chopin, focuses on visualizing the emotions and the role that the women of the 19th century had as wives. And so, Kate Chopin shows the role of women and what is expected of them by telling a story of a woman who experiences an emotional transformation as soon as she finds out she is a widow. The emotional transformation that Mrs. Mallard
In “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin creates a theme of heartbreak and shows this through independence that is a forbidden pleasure. When Louise hears from Josephine and Richards about Brently’s, her husband's, death, she reacts with obvious agony. Louise then starts to realize that she is now an independent woman, and at this realization she becomes excited to her new found independence. Even though these are her private thoughts, she at first tries the joy she feels, to “beat it back with her will—as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.” ( 1 ). With this, it shows that if you hold something back for so long, with how the forbidden this pleasure can be so appealing.
A key theme found throughout the Bible is that of God being glorified through the actions of people who are full of imperfections. One such example is King David, the greatest of the Israelite kings. He sinned against God in sleeping with Bathsheeba and then having her husband killed on the battlefield. (II Samuel 11) Yet he is still commonly seen as a champion of the Jewish faith. George Herbert took this theme of God glorifying Himself through human frailty and incorporated it into his poem, "The Windows." As a metaphysical poet, Herbert puts most of the meaning of the poem into a deeper level. Herbert does this by choosing words that contain several different meanings, all of which serve to further exemplify the theme, in such areas as human imperfection, God’s love and finally, the effect upon people of God showing Himself to them through the lives of others.
“There is no perfect relationship. The idea that there is gets us into so much trouble.”-Maggie Reyes. Kate Chopin reacts to this certain idea that relationships in a marriage during the late 1800’s were a prison for women. Through the main protagonist of her story, Mrs. Mallard, the audience clearly exemplifies with what feelings she had during the process of her husbands assumed death. Chopin demonstrates in “The Story of an Hour” the oppression that women faced in marriage through the understandings of: forbidden joy of independence, the inherent burdens of marriage between men and women and how these two points help the audience to further understand the norms of this time.