Story of an Hour

Paragraph five is full of life. Mrs. Mallard is looking out the window, feeling despair. As she looks out the window, “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life.” (Chopin, 1894) It is starting to dawn on her that the world awaits her. “The delicious breath of rain was in the air.” (Chopin, 1894) Mrs. Mallard can start fresh with a new life.

In this story, Kate Chopin writes about Mrs. Mallard, using the words, “suspension of intelligent thought.” (Chopin, 1894) I believe that this means that she was not in reality nor was she thinking in reality. All she was seeing were the benefits to her husband’s death. The passage that is the opposite of this is, “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.” She shows some emotion for her husband.

“When the doctor’s came they said she had died of heart disease-of joy that kills.” (Chopin, 1894) This is what the story is all about. The shock of the joy of being free being ripped right out from under her is what killed her, not the joy of seeing her husband alive.