Analyze Fiction

The past few weeks of class have been mostly short stories written by women during the late 1800's. I have decided that during the turn of the century women in America were oppressed by men. Kate Chopin's Ð''The Story of an Hour' is a perfect example, being written in 1894, of how this is so.

Kate Chopin sets the story in the house of our protagonist, Louise who shares the home with her husband and antagonist, Brently Mallard. Louise is at home when she gets the terrible, or not so terrible, news of her husband's death at work. The first sentence of the short story, "Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death," is foreshadowing that something is going to happen with her heart somewhere in this story. When her husband walks in from a long day of work, Louise has some kind of heart trouble that causes her to die. Why? We will never know, however, by being oppressed by her husband, then be set free after his "death", then finding out she is not actually free would probably kill any poor woman of that era.

Louise does cry when her sister tells her of her husband's death, however, only for a brief moment because she realizes that she is no longer oppressed by the man and she is free to live her life the way she wants, whether it be with another man or by herself. She realizes what is going on around her when Chopin writes, "But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought." At this point in the story, she beings realizing that she can now look forward to a life of happiness where oppression is not an option.

"When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease-- of joy that kills." I feel that when her husband walked in the door, she was not shocked that he was alive. Instead, she was in agony that the demoralized