Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”: Summary, Analysis, and Themes

The Story of an Hour is a short story by American writer Kate Chopin. It describes an hour of a woman’s life after she hears of her husband’s death in a railroad accident. The story drew inspiration from Chopin’s own life: when she was eight years old, her father died in such an accident. 

It was first published on 6 December 1894 in Vogue magazine as The Dream of an Hour. It was renamed as The Story of an Hour when it was reprinted the next year in St. Louis Life. The story is the author’s shortest work and her most popular one. It is widely read and frequently anthologized.

Having grown up around independent women who became her role models, Chopin developed ideas about women’s independence early on. These, however, deviated significantly from societally accepted notions of how a woman ought to behave. Having been widowed early in her marriage, she began writing and publishing stories that examined race, gender, marriage, and independence. Her work addressed these issues before the feminist movement had grown widespread in America. In fact, she is commonly regarded as one of its forerunners. 

Chopin’s success was immediate; even though she wrote about characters that would not receive popular approval, her stances on the issues she tackled were not obvious at first. For instance, she mocks racial attitudes in Desiree’s Baby but without sermonizing. Instead, the reader is drawn in through a building up of suspense. Matters changed, however, after the publication of her first novel, The Awakening. It shocked society then and was banned in several places. On the other hand, it remains a seminal work in feminist literature. 

Plot Summary of The Story of an Hour

The story begins when Louise Mallard receives news that her husband has died in a railroad accident. The news is brought to her by her sister Josephine and her husband’s friend Richards, who had been the first to hear about the accident. They have to inform her gently because she has heart trouble.

Her heart condition necessitates that the bearers of bad news break it to her gently. The need for care is further emphasized in the face of her explosive reaction.

When she first hears it, Louise breaks down crying. Immediately after that, she isolates and locks herself in a room and introspects about her situation. It dawns on her that she is now a free woman and that she can do with her life whatever she feels like. This realization brings her a lot of joy, and she prays that she has a long life of this freedom.

All the while she was locked in her room, her sister, Josephine, had been pleading with her to come out. Having arrived at her happy conclusion, Louise unlocks the door and starts descending the staircase with Josephine. Just then, the front door opens and Brently Mallard, Louise’s husband, enters the house. Everyone is dumbfounded at his arrival, and the shock kills Louise.

Characters in The Story of an Hour

• Louise Mallard: She is the main character in the story. Hearing of her husband’s death, she is grief-stricken as would be expected but, within the space of an hour, undergoes several changes in perspective. When she feels the dawning of the realization that she is free, she first tries to reject it and is in fact terrified of it. But then, she accepts it and it brings her immense happiness. Louise also has a bad heart, which causes her own death at the shock of seeing her husband who, it turns out, is very much alive.

• Josephine: She is Louise’s sister and, with Richards, is the bearer of the bad news of Mr. Mallard’s death. She clearly cares for Louise very much and tries to be gentle when she breaks the news. She is also very concerned for Louise when the latter locks herself up in her room. Josephine does not recognize that what her sister is experiencing is a sense of independence and sheer joy, rather than the expected grief.

• Richards: He is Mr. Mallard’s friend and the first person to receive the news of his death. He is a considerate person, as he double-checks via telegram before distressing Louise with the news. He is also mindful of her heart condition and rushes to tell her before someone else might handle the situation indelicately.

• Brently Mallard: He is Louise’s husband, who everyone believes is dead. However, he himself is unaware of this whole situation and is puzzled by everyone’s surprise. It is clear from Louise’s reverie that he is a kind man and that he loves his wife but is unaware of the repression she feels.

Analysis of The Story of an Hour

The Story of an Hour is a clever exploration of a woman’s feelings and sense of identity in a society where there are very rigid beliefs and expectations of how she is supposed to feel and behave. 

“The Story of an Hour” examines the impact of societal expectations on one‘s internal life, and what happens when one breaks free of them.

Societal expectations dictate even her reception of the news and the manner in which she immediately expresses her grief. When she bursts out crying, a genuine expression of sorrow and anguish, it is unexpected and considered to be worthy of remark. Her own sister is surprised that Louise did not conform and react as most other women in her position would: upon hearing of their husbands’ sudden deaths, they are struck dumb in disbelief, to the point of near paralysis. Their sorrow should be of such a magnitude that they instantly deny reality and are rendered completely unable to comprehend what is happening around them. Louise’s reaction, on the other hand, is none of those things—she has immediately grasped her reality and is expressing grief, not denial.

In such an environment, where society expects to dictate deeply personal aspects of one’s life, there is little to no space for the exploration of an individual’s identity, especially when the individual is a woman. “Who is Louise Mallard?” “What does she want?” “What does she like?” “What is she capable of?” These are questions that even Louise Mallard herself has probably never thought to ask before now.

Until her husband’s death, Louise probably hadn’t thought about what her own identity is.

Society saw her only as the wife of Brently Mallard, so she saw herself the same way as well. Her identity was defined through him, and his death most likely shook her own. With the sense of her own identity  so wrapped up in his, the crying and the tears that she shed may well have been for the death of herself, as much as that of her husband.

Therefore, when Louise realizes that it is only Brently who is dead and not herself, and that her existence is, in fact, independent of his, her initial terror passes. It slowly dawns on her that not only is she an individual in her own right, but that her husband’s death has actually freed her to be able to define what kind of a person she is. Her grief is far surpassed by the joy that overwhelms her at the moment. Her happiness is not an indication of her marriage—she knows she’ll be sad that he is gone. It is not about him at all. Instead, maybe for the first time in her adult life, her emotions are solely about her and no one else. 

The surprise and irony at the end of The Story of an Hour turns it into a dark comedy. At first, the irony is Louise’s surprising joy at her husband’s death. It is definitely not something expected as she has just lost her husband. It grows even stronger at the end. At the beginning of the story, Josephine and Richards tried to take great care in relaying the news of Mr. Mallard’s death because of Louise’s heart condition. The story then ends with a complete reversal of the situation—Brently Mallard is very much alive, and Louise has died of shock at this fact. Also, the doctors deem the death to have resulted from excess joy, when in fact the reader knows that it is much more likely to have been shock and despair.

Kate Chopin uses irony to lend a dark comedy to the short story.

The story is also an excellent example of the subversive nature of Chopin’s writing. Upon first glance, The Story of an Hour may be read as a moral tale: a woman who seemingly rejoices at her husband’s death dies in the end. However, when examined with the context of the author’s life and other works, the tragedy of the story becomes evident, as does the fact of with whom Chopin’s own sympathies lay.

Themes in The Story of an Hour

• Women’s Selfhood, Identity and Freedom: Louise’s independent identity comes only with her freedom. This freedom comes only with the death of her husband. By concocting this state of affairs, Chopin is, in fact, commenting on the repressive outlook held by society at that time. Louise’s freedom has come not because her husband is abusive towards her, but because society is unable to view her as separate from him. Since she, too, lives in and is a part of that same society, she is also unable to view herself differently as long as he lives.

• Marriage: Chopin doesn’t paint marriage as necessarily a cruel institution but one that has come to be manipulated to suit patriarchal interests. Brently, by Louise’s own admission, does not treat her badly and, in fact, appears to love her. But she isn’t able to return that emotion as she is, relative to him, in a repressed condition, and he has inadvertently become that tool of repression. 19th century American society had shaped marriage to be so, rather than to be a more equal relationship.

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