Internal Conflict In The Story Of An Hour

“She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long.” In The Story Of An Hour by Kate Chopin we explore what happens to Mrs. Mallard after the death of her husband. As a result of her husbands death Mrs. Mallard begins to face internal conflict as well as external conflict. Mrs. Mallard begins to face internal conflict a short time after Richard revealed her husband death. When she was sitting in her room alone after crying and feeling hopeless over her husband death it states that “There was something coming to her and she was waiting, fearfully ... She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will - as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been”. Here you can witness her conflict within herself. It isn’t something that is physically trying to posses her but a thought that she is trying to hold back from reaching the surface of her mind. Although she …show more content…
Mallard once agains faces an internal conflict when she begins to reflect on whether or not she truly loved her husband. This thought comes to her once she truly lets herself feel the happiness of having of freedom from her husband once she realized that “There would be one to live for her during these coming years; she would live for herself.” even though in the next paragraph she says that “Yet she had loved him-sometimes”. This is were the contradictory of her feelings appear again. Although she is truly grateful for the opportunity she has just been given, she can’t help and think on whether or not that her love for him was real. She quickly abandons this thought and comes to the conclusion that “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” The thought came to her that what does the mystery of love matter when she can control her life