Hopeless Freedom In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

An Hour of Hopeless Freedom Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” shows us how married women, in her time, are oppressed by their husbands. She wrote this story in order to shine light on the issue that many women are facing; she is a realist after all. The story revolves around Mrs. Louise Mallard, the protagonist, and throughout the story she gains a sense of freedom when she is told that her husband has died in a “railroad disaster” (555). Subsequently, after the premise has been said to Mrs. Mallard, she starts contemplating on her newly gained freedom and fantasizes the many opportunities she now has. She is filled with joy, but later realizes that her husband is not dead, but alive and “a little travel-stained” (557). As soon as she sees for herself that he is not dead she quickly “died of heart disease – of joy that kills” (557). Her new found freedom is the only thing that preoccupied Mrs. Mallard’s mind rather than her husband’s death; …show more content…
Throughout this story, Chopin illustrates this dreadful oppression Mrs. Mallard and other women are facing, by the hands of their husbands. For Mrs. Mallard, she found freedom when she is told about her husband’s death. Mrs. Mallard wants to desperately escape this repression, and when she does, she loses herself in a deep thought of hopeless freedom. She knew “something was coming”, and it sure was not freedom, but regardless, she continued to fantasize unceasingly (556). Sheer freedom is all she longed for and when she saw her husband alive it was not what she wanted; it was too much for her to process after the many fantasies she had of living life on her own that she eventually died. Death took her by surprise when she sees her husband alive; this is what was coming to her, her