Depression In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

Depression can be a funny thing sometimes. In Kate Chopin’s short story, “The Story of an Hour”, written in 1894, a woman finds out that her husband died in a train crash. At first, she’s not sure what to feel but as time goes by, she goes from sad to happy that she can finally be independent and no longer have her husband looming over her. Just as she’s ready to enjoy her life, it’s literally cut short when she goes downstairs and her husband walks in the door, completely alive, not even knowing that there had been an accident on the train he was supposed to be on. The story shows how something that would be sad for most people can be the thing another person yearns for, although it makes no sense because she could have left him any time she felt like it. Though short, “The Story of an Hour” symbolizes a representation of loss, and how it can be both happy and sad through the eyes of a woman who, when she thought she lost her husband, grieved briefly before becoming joyful, then finding out he wasn’t really dead, and as a result, winding up dead herself. …show more content…
Mallard’s new life. Although initially, she “wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister 's arms”, the “storm of grief . . . spent itself [and] she went away to her room alone” (par 3). This could be a normal reaction, except she did not act like people normally would if their significant other was killed. It was as if there was “something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully” (par 9). She didn’t know what she was feeling and was not sure if she really wanted to know. Normally, people might become depressed, or at least go through a few stages of grief, but for her, it was a short period of weeping, ending with her thinking of a better future, without her husband. Because she had been waiting for his death for a long time, she was hesitant to believe her future could become a