The Story of an Hour - Unit 2

It has been my pleasure to read other Kate Chopin literary works. Chopin has a unique ability to write in a way that touches a woman’s senses. In “Story of an Hour,” Chopin proves this talent in paragraph 5, with her descriptions of “new spring life” outside her window (193). Only a woman, when facing the news of a spouse’s death, could focus on the new life outside her window, when life as she knows it has just fallen apart. The emotions that the main character, Mrs. Mallard feels change from utter remorse to having no feelings at all, as in paragraph 7 when she sits with “suspension of intelligent thought,” thinking nothing at all, just being (193). Mrs. Mallard very quickly came to the realization that she did not have to feel remorseful or wallow in self pity, but that she was now “Free, free, free!” and this filled her with a new emotion, joy (194). She knows that she loved her husband, at times, and she knows she will miss him, but she also realizes she will not miss the oppression she had felt as a married woman in the 1800’s in Louisiana. The story does not seem to allude to any physical domestic violence between Brently Mallard and his wife, perhaps mental but not physical. It does give me the impression that the times Mrs. Mallard lived in were not kind to married women, as was indicated when Chopin writes,

“There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending her in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature” (194).

She realizes that her life will be very different from this point on, although I do question that as widows were held to very strict moral standards during that time in history, so I do not believe Mrs. Mallard would really have been free. She does finally get what she wants though, she finds the only true freedom there is, at the moment the doctor declares her dead, and Mrs. Mallard has nothing to worry about ever again.