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Analysis of the story of an hour by chopin
The story of an hour kate chopin analysis
The story of an hour kate chopin analysis
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For women, the 19th century was a time of inequality, oppression, and inferiority to their male counterparts. A woman's social standing depended solely on her marital status. For these reasons many women were forced to lead a life of solitude and emotional inadequacy, often causing depression. In Kate Chopin's short story "The Story of an Hour," setting plays a significant role in illustrating the bittersweet triumph of Mrs. Mallard's escape from oppression at the ironic cost of her life.
Chopin sets the story in the springtime to represent a time of new life and rebirth, which mirrors Louise's discovery of her freedom. Louise immediately takes herself to a room where, "facing the window [sat] a comfortable, roomy armchair" (Chopin 470). The news of her husband's death leaves her feeling lost and confused, seeking answers about her future. In her husband's lifetime, she was "pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach to her soul," but once left alone to gaze out of the open window and to observe the "patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds," she recognizes freedom for the first time (Chopin 470). Initially, she fails to fully comprehend the mysterious yet promising beginning to her new life, but soon welcomes it as, "she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window" (Chopin 471). Getting a glimpse of her life with an absolute and fresh freedom gives her the strength to abandon a life of solitude and to "spread her arms out [. . .] in welcome" (Chopin 471). Just as springtime is a fresh beginning to a new year, Louise's discovery of sovereignty is a hopeful promise to a new life.
Aside from the springtime, Chopin creates an atmosphere that parallels ...
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...e could explore her own intuitions and be her own self, and like most women, it was a dream she had longed for since birth.
Unfortunately, her hope for long years and many beautiful spring days was abruptly ended in an ironic twist. Unbeknownst to herself and her company, Mr. Mallard had survived, and within an hour the promises of a bright future for Mrs. Mallard had both began and came to an end. Her grievous death was misconstrued as joy to the others: "they said she had died of heart disease-of joy that kills" (Chopin 471). This statement embodies the distorted misconception that a woman lives only for her man. The audience, in fact, sees just the opposite. To Louise her life was elongated at the news of her husband's death, not cut short. Throughout the story, one hopes Louise will gain her freedom. Ironically, she is granted freedom, but only in death.
The Story of an Hour is a short story of Ms. Mallard, a woman with a heart condition who receives short term good news. Chopin uses contrast between independence, marriage, and gender to show how hidden emotions can effect a woman’s actions in the time period where women did not have much power or right to speak what came to their mind.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves. ( This description of the scenery is very happy, usually not how one sees the world after hearing devastating news of her husbands death.)
She whispers, “Free! Body and soul free!” (Chopin). Though her situation is sad, she does not have a remorseful response. She locks herself in her room and reflects upon her new reality. She instead comes to find a form of liberation for herself from her husband’s death. As she looks out the window, Chopin writes, “…she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window,” (Chopin). Chopin is stating Louie’s newly found greatness for her life. She is now able to live for herself and not behind her husband as society has told her. She can be different and gain more from her life now because she does not have to follow or live for a man, as many woman did in society. She feels exonerated from her bondage, which is marriage, and she now feels she can have a life for herself. In the end, her husband is actually found to be alive as he walks into the room. Chopin writes, “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills,” (Chopin). From seeing her husband, Louise dies. It was joy that had killed her. Readers can easily believe that she died because of the shock that her husband was still alive, but in reality she died from the loss of her new found greatness. The joy that killed her was her own
As Louise contemplates the fact of Brently Mallard's death, however, her grief gives way to a far more powerful feeling—a feeling of joy in her own freedom. Louise realizes that she will feel sad when she sees Brently's "kind, tender hands folded in death," but she also realizes that for the first time in years she actually wants to live. While Louise is intoxicated with this newfound joy, Josephine, who fears that Louise might harm herself in her anguish over Brently's death, implores her to leave the locked room and come downstairs. As the two women descend the staircase, Brently Mallard walks in the front door. Chopin comments, "he had been far from the scene of accident, and did not even know there had been one." Upon seeing her husband, Louise suffers a heart attack and dies. This simple surface action belies the complexities of the prose style.
In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”, it talks about marriage and a woman’s life in the 1800’s. This story illustrates the stifling nature of a woman’s role during this time through Mrs. Mallard’s reaction to her husband’s death. When Mrs. Mallard obtains news that her husband is dead, she is hurt after a brief moment and then she is delighted with the thought of freedom. This story shows how life was in the mid 1800’s and how women were treated around that time.
Those expectations are shown through the emotions of the main character, Louise, and her rollercoaster of thoughts concerning her husband’s death in the story. Originally, she is upset that he has passed, but as she looks outside and sees how bright and new the spring is she stumbles upon the realization that his death is positive. She is finally free of society’s harsh standards concerning women and them having to be married because widows were not forced to remarry. In the end, Louise dies from a heart condition in a medical and metaphorical sense. She did indeed have a heart condition that was noted in the beginning of the story, but she was also dead with grief that her husband was alive and that her moment of freedom had been snatched from her clutches once
In the story it says, “It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of ‘killed.’.” (Chopin, 1). This shows that she received a news about her husband being killed and later one she becomes so happy due to this news. At the end of the story she gets heart attack because she sees her husband at the door. At the end of story it says, “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.” (Chopin, 2). This is saying that she has died because she was so happy when she heard that her husband is dead but soon as she heard her husband enter the door she died of it. This shows how Louise character changed from the beginning of the story to the end of the story from the reaction she had from seeing her husband and hearing news about
At first, Louise is fearful of how her life would be without her husband, who kept her oppressed for all that while. Her grief is reasonable and fitting, but it doesn't last a while. Once her anguish died down, she was able to see that there was something much better in her future and that the death of her husband meant that she finally had her independence. At first, she tries to muffle the joy she feels over this realization; this shows that she was still afraid of being autonomous. Eventually, as the story continues, she embraces the change. This newfound sense of autonomy enlivens and fills her with joy. She figures out that what she has now is more important than what she had before. Joy overtakes her grief (Chopin 56). Though the story does not give any concrete examples of the said suppression, Louise's state of mental liberation after her husband's death is enough of a
of a sunny day than a gloomy sky. At this point it is almost confusing
The entire action happens in the "spring" (Chopin 69) of a year in the 1890's. Spring means hope. But woman are restricted by the society in 1890's. The two time settings create a conflict between Louise's expectation and reality. Secondly, the author uses a lot of place setting.
The descriptions in the story foreshadow the tragedy that ends the story. The author believed unexpected things happen often. In the case of this story, Louise Mallard believed her husband to be dead, having been told this by her sister, Josephine. However, when it is revealed that her husband had been alive the whole time, she is unhappy to see him and suffers a fatal heart attack. While she did have heart trouble, Richards and Josephine thought that the news of her husband’s death, not her seeing him again would be detrimental to her health, possibly even fatal. Chopin succeeded in getting this message across.
Kate Chopin, author of “The Story of an Hour” written in 1894 was the first author who emphasized strongly on femininity in her work. In the short story, Chopin writes about freedom and confinement Chopin is an atypical author who confronts feminist matter years before it was assumed. The time period that she wrote in women were advertised as a man’s property. The main idea in the short story is to illustrate that marriage confines women. In “The Story of an Hour” the author creates an intricate argument about freedom and confinement Mrs. Louise Mallard longing for freedom, but has been confined for so long freedom seems terrible. Mrs. Mallard wife of Brently Mallard instantly feels free when her husband dies. The reason she feels this way
In the beginning of the story, Chopin refers to Louise as Mrs. Mallard, giving her the appearance of a basic housewife who hides behind her husband; waiting on him hand and foot. When in reality she is much more than that, but is simply being held back by her husband’s plans for her, and society’s view on how women should act and how they should
...egaining her husband and all of the loss of freedom her marriage entails. The line establishes that Louise's heart condition is more of a metaphor for her emotional state than a medical reality.” (Koloski) It is ironic that she accepts the death of her husband and is joyous and free, and then he ends up being alive after she walks out of the room with a sense of power. The ending of The Story of an hour by Kate Chopin implies that maybe the only true resolution of conflict is in death.
Key Elements:The story of an hour · Plot: Standard plot. A woman who receive the notice of her husband's death, and when she begins to felt freedom her husband appear again and she can't accept it and fall died. · Characterization: Few characters a. Mrs. Mallard or Louise: Mallard's wife. Was afflicted with hearth trouble.