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analysis of a story of an hour
the story of an hour analysis and outline
the analysis of the story of an hour
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The main character in this story is Louise Mallard, a delicate woman whose life is changed with the announcement of her husbands’ death, delivered by her sister and a family friend.
Louise receives the news with overwhelming grief and tears where others would have been shocked into disbelief. Her grief is short lived as she begins to imagine her future alone. Any burdens Louise had felt were lifted at her thoughts of being free to live for herself. As she sits in her room digesting all the mixed emotions running through her mind and heart, Louise experiences the fact that her marriage of discontent was over. Unbeknownst to others, she longed for independence and a will of her own.
Although Louise was loved by her husband and she at times loved him, it was her deep need for self-reliance that turned this otherwise somber occasion into one of joy. The repression of her marriage was over and it was this comfort that allowed Louise to recover from the news quickly. At her sister’s insistence, she comes out of the room, appearing calm and serene.
As they descend the stairs, they hear a lock turning in the door and her husband walks in, very much alive. The shock, combined with the sudden realization that she would never be her own person, Louise dies upon seeing her husband. It was thought by the doctor that it was heart disease that killed Louise, but it was more likely the fact her dreams had died in that moment.
The overall mood of this story was melancholy, filled with emotions of sadness, relief and joyful anticipation, shown in the descriptions of life from the bedroom window; spring in the air, the peddler with his ware, birds singing and blue skies showing through the clouds.
We all can identify with the feelings of restlessness or being stifled at some points in our lives. It can occur with our jobs, children, and our chaotic lifestyles or maybe in our marriages.
Both Nora and Louise's lives have been shaped and molded to conform to their husbands' wishes. At the time these stories took place, it was basically unheard of for women to assert their beliefs or to act upon their ideas. As a result, Louise was forced to succumb to the role of an obedient wife, in order to abide by the norms of society. This is apparent because of the way she reacts when she learns of a false rumor regarding her husband's sudden death. While in deep thought, and staring out the window by herself, she has a sudden realization of complete happiness and total freedom. As she tries hard to repress these fresh, new feelings, she speaks the words, "free, free, free" (23)! These words help the audience to understand the repression she has been forced to withstand for many years. She feels sudden exhilaration as she reflects on what her new life will bring her. She speaks of the treatmen...
Her bedroom was closed but with an “open window” (463), with a roomy armchair she sank into. As she is looking out the window she sees “the tops of trees,” “new spring life,” “breath of rain was in the air,” and she could hear a peddler below in the street, calling to customers, and “patches of blue sky showing” (463). The author depicts in the previous sentence that when she uses “breath of rain was in the air,” rain is more like a cleansing so she could be feeling a sign of relief but can’t recognize it. She sat with her head on the cushion “quite motionless,” except when a sob came in her throat and “shook her,” like a child “continuously sobbing” (463) in its dreams. The author uses imagery in the previous
...er marriage. This all comes out during the one hour that Louise believes Brently is gone. After she sees him at the door; alive, we learn one last thing about Louise. She drops dead. I previously stated that heart trouble is an important part of who Louise is, not just the condition of her heart. That is easily visible at this point in the story. Ironically, those around her think that the "joy that kills" (paragraph 23) is joy at seeing her husband alive. Some readers think that knowing the joy of being free and then having that joy taken from her is what kills her. Thus leaving us restless to know what really went on within this complex woman, Louise Mallard.
Firstly, within this passage, Louise’s internal tension grows as she notices her physical deterioration. The narrator seems to become mindfully
This was her first response to the news of his death. She would not had grieved over someone she did not love. Even in the heat of her passion she thinks about her lost love.
Louise is trapped in her marriage. The lines of her face "bespoke repression" (paragraph 8). When Louise acknowledges that her husband is dead, she knows that there will "be no powerful will bending her" (paragraph 14). There will be no husband who believes he has the "right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature" (paragraph 14). Louise knows that her husband loved her. Brently had only ever looked at Louise with love (paragraph 13). This tells the reader that Brently is not a horrible ma...
The story is very short, but every word has import in the story and each line has great depth of meaning. It is possible to infer a great deal about the woman's life, even though we are given very little on the surface. A telegraph and a railroad are mentioned in the first paragraph, so there is some idea of the time the story takes place. We are also given her married name and the full name of her husband. The fact that she is referred to only as "Mrs. Mallard", while her husband's full name is given, coupled with what we learn on the second page, gives some indication of the repression she's had to suffer through and the indignity society placed on woman in those times. We also learn in the first paragraph that she lives in a man's world, for, though it is her sister that tells her the news, it is her husband's friend who rushes over with the story. Even after his death, she is confined to the structures she adopted with married life, including the close friend's of her husband.
...s. If we review the story as a whole, we realize that the disquieting effect of the first sentence is heightened as we confront instances of agent disjunction and pronominalization, ambiguity, and diminution. Our positive feelings about Louise's self-assertion are qualified word by word. Although Louise struggles with a few moments of fearful anticipation, her progression toward self-assertion is predicated on "news" and "veiled hints," and she gives herself up to an undefined "something" without stopping to ask if it is or is not a "monstrous joy." As much as we would like to follow her, the route is closed to us. The cumulative experience of the text does not allow such simple complicity.
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.)
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.
In the first phase of grief, Louise is given news by her sister that her husband is dead. Louise is in the denial stage of the conversation, so there is not any understanding of the words that her sister is saying. When Louise accepts the death is when she can grow from
...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.
First of all. Louise was genuinely heartbroken. She enters the room alone to giver herself a minute to compose what has been told to her. "Into this she ssnk, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul". It has eaten her away the thoughts she was witholding. She loved him- sometimes (Chopin page 101) but what is love to someone so
The main character in this story, Louise Mallard shows us her dream of freedom and proves these people wrong when her husband, Brently Mallard, dies. Louise’s husband was on a list of people that died in a railroad disaster. They tell her carefully since she has a heart condition. She starts crying, but afterwards she begins to think of all the positive things that come from his death. Her sister, Josephine goes upstairs to make sure she is okay,and once she finds out she is they come down. As they walk down the stairs she sees the door being opened and her husband comes in. Having her heart condition, she dies. The doctors thought “she had died from heart disease-of joy that kills.” However, she didn't die from the joy of getting to see her living husband but from losing her future filled with freedom.
Upon seeing her husband alive and well Louise realizes that the life she has imagined is not to be. The return of Brently signals a return of the patriarchal oppression in her life, and after imagining herself as an individual and then to be denied the chance to live freely is a punishment far worse than the crime. Louise loses her identity and once again becomes "his wife." Richards once more tries to protect her, a helpless woman, by attempting to block her view from her husband, because of the fragile state of her heart. Mrs. Mallard's strengths are gone, never to be acknowledged by the men in her life. For one, brief hour she was an individual. Now she finds herself bound by masculine oppression with no end in sight, and the result is death.