Irony In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

In “The Story of an Hour” I would first like to discuss irony. In the very beginning of this short story irony jumped out at me. In fact, it was the first sentence, “Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.” (Gioia, Kennedy. 163). The irony to me in this sentence is because in the story she ends up dying of heart disease, or in other words heart joy. This first sentence was just the very beginning of the very ironic story. When I first read this story I didn’t catch on to any irony, but the ending. After I finished reading the story, I went back and started to reread. I was truly amazed by how much irony was in “The Story of an Hour” that I didn’t notice the first time. The most ironic part of “The Story of an Hour” was when she was unquestionably happy that her husband was dead. She stated that she actually wanted to live now however before she thought life was too long. It seems like before she was waiting for life …show more content…
First, I would like to point out that the story is in the setting limited to one hour. In this hour a lot is happening in such a short story. Throughout this whole hour the primary setting takes place in Mr. and Mrs. Mallard’s house. What I found that was quite interesting is that the house never is really described. I know that it is a short story, and that information is quite limited. I just thought it was interesting how the primary setting was the house but only very few things were specified. The secondary setting was the outside and where her husband worked. Mrs. Mallard did go into detail about what she was seeing from looking out her window. All in all, I consider the setting to be very mysterious. During my reading, I started to picture what I thought it would be like in her house. I think it was fascinating that it makes the reader use their