“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin
“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin is very intriguing, not only because of the emotional change Louise Mallard goes through the hour after her husband’s tragic death but also the way Chopin uses irony in the story. During this analysis of “The Story of an Hour” we will discuss the summary, plot, setting, tone, theme, point of view, emotions of Louise Mallard and other characters involved in the story. Chopin’s story uses the feelings of a married woman in the late 1890’s and feminine identities, to help the reader better understand married life of a woman during that period in time. In the story, Louise Mallard is a young woman with a heart condition who recently is informed of her husband’s death. At first she is sad and then a wonderful feeling begins to come over her, it is happiness; freedom, although she does not feel that for long. “She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead” (Chopin 2). “And yet she had loved him – sometimes. Often she had not” (Chopin 2). Kate Chopin uses nature imagery, irony and tragedy to set the theme; women’s role in a marriage and feminine identity. “Marriage was considered a sacred institution. Divorce was quite rare in the 1800s and if one was to occur; men were automatically given legal control of all property and children” (Hicks 1).
The point of view in Chopin’s short story, the narrator uses a non-participant approach to tell the story in third person point of view with limited omniscience. Whether or not the reader is more sympathetic with the narrator using first person depends on the story. In this story, I think the read...
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2. An overview of “The Story of an Hour”. Jennifer Hicks. Short Stories for Students. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Word Count: 1457. From Literature Resource Center.
3. Emotions in The Story of an Hour. S. Selina Jamil. The Explicator. 67.3 (Spring 2009) p215.Word Count: 2612. From Literature Resource Center.
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Women should be powerful, beautiful and intelligence. Nevertheless, women in the eighteenth century were portrayed as servants did not have any say in anything just like the story of an hour by Kate Chopin, where even in a good marriage you could not do the things you wanted to do. What if their husbands died what would come of them? How would they feel? And the irony of gaining freedom but losing everything?
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In conclusion, “The story of an hour” is a clear depiction that women status in the society determines the choices they make about their lives. In this work, Chopin depicts a woman as a lesser being without identity or voices of their own. They are expected to remain in oppressive marriages and submit to their husbands without question.
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Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour. 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.
In "The Story of an Hour" Kate Chopin tells the story of a woman, Mrs. Mallard whose husband is thought to be dead. Throughout the story Chopin describes the emotions Mrs. Mallard felt about the news of her husband's death. However, the strong emotions she felt were not despair or sadness, they were something else. In a way she was relieved more than she was upset, and almost rejoiced in the thought of her husband no longer living. In using different literary elements throughout the story, Chopin conveys this to us on more than one occasion.
Tucker, Martin. Moulton’s Library of Literary Criticism. Volume 4. Frederick Ungar Publishing Company. New York. 1967.
Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour is a brilliant short story of irony and emotion. The story demonstrates conflicts that take us through the character’s emotions as she finds out about the death of her husband. Without the well written series of conflicts and events this story, the reader would not understand the depth of Mrs. Mallard’s inner conflict and the resolution at the end of the story. The conflict allows us to follow the emotions and unfold the irony of the situation in “The Story of an Hour.”
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