The Story Of An Hour Analysis

In "The Story of an Hour," Chopin describes for us a story of great irony. We are introduced to Mrs. Mallard a woman who has just been informed that her husband is dead. At first she did cry and was saddened by his death, but then she was filled with an overwhelming sense of happiness and freedom. In the end though, Brently Mallard returns home. At the sight of her husband, alive and well, Mrs. Mallard passes away due to a "heart disease - of joy that kills."

Many people would think that happiness and freedom is not a normal response, but I can understand how a woman can feel free from the husband that she has been with for a long time. First, we must consider the time period that the piece was written in, the late 1800's. It is common knowledge that marriages are not always about mutual love between two people and during the time that Chopin was writing, this was more often the case. Marriage was more about monetary comfort, social status and acceptance than it was about possible love. It seems from the description that Mrs. Mallard has been trapped in this marriage for a long time even though we know she is young.

Not only is she trapped in a marriage, but it also seems that Mrs. Mallard is unable to have an identity of her own because of her husband. All she was really known as was Mrs. Mallard. In the beginning of the story, everyone had a first name except for Mrs. Mallard. It was not until her husband's supposed death that we find out her name is Louise. It's like a spiritual freeing of the woman that was caged behind the man. Obviously she felt free because she said it over and over. "And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being! 'Free! Body and soul free!' she kept whispering." Free from the burden of her marriage and able to be her own person with her own identity.

There were certain words that lent themselves to the mood of the story. "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one