"Story of An Hour"

In “Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin uses paragraph 5 not as a way to move the plot along but as a means of showing the reader Mrs. Mallard’s true feelings about her husband’s death. The window she is gazing out of represents a whole set of possibilities for this new widow. She is like the “tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life” (193). The end of her husband’s life signifies the beginning of her new, free life. Just as the sparrows have been liberated from the bitterness of winter, she too has been liberated from her husband’s controlling grasp. “The notes of a distant song” (193) symbolize the lighthearted, carefree life that awaits her. For a moment in the story Mrs. Mallard “indicated a suspension of intelligent thought” (193). She is not yet thinking clearly. In her own way, she is soaking in the fact that her husband is truly gone. However, by paragraph 11 she realizes she has been liberated and begins to repeat the phrase “free, free, free” (194). This paragraph states that “the vacant stare and the look that had followed it went from her eyes” (194) because Mrs. Mallard has now gained control of her conscious thoughts. The sentence “there would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself” (194) strongly states the story’s significance. Mrs. Mallard believes she has been released from the life in which she was bound to her husband and his controlling ways. She will now have the ability to make decisions on her own and live according to her own desires.