Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

Great Essays
Throughout the late 19th century women questioned the domineering patriarchal society of the time and demanded augmented rights and freedom. In “The Story of an Hour” Kate Chopin, through Mrs. Mallard’s experience with her husband’s death, contemplates the existence and effects of societal biases towards women and the harmful attributes of marriage as an institution. In particular, Chopin employs the downstairs section at the beginning to characterize society's notion of Mrs. Mallard as feeble and at the end of the story to reveal the negative consequences of societal preconceptions on her. When Mrs. Mallard goes upstairs, she initially affirms the societal preconceptions of dependant and weak women, but ultimately accepts her independence …show more content…
Mallard goes back downstairs, she realizes that her freedom is inexistent and society‘s preconceptions will never let her be free, which eventually kills her. As soon as she is downstairs, she is immediately treated as a feeble female when Richard attempts to “screen him from the view of his wife” (Chopin 244). By attempting to screen Mrs. Mallard, Richard implies that the shock of seeing her husband would cause her to have a heart attack, because she was a frail woman incapable of handling her husband’s reappearance. Even though she does die when seeing her husband, this is caused by her strength and reluctance to give up her freedom and not her weak character. Mrs. Mallard in turn realizes that the notion that she could defy society’s views of weak and dependant women vanishes instantaneously with her husband’s return. As a result, she dies because she is unwilling to confine to society’s view of women, symbolized through Richard’s actions, due to her newfound accepted autonomy. When Mrs. Mallard dies at the end, the narrator claims that “when the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease- of joy that kills” (Chopin 244). This shows that once freed from the repressiveness of marriage, Mrs. Mallard is unable to reenter marriage because she is unwilling to give up her new freedom. She in turn dies from the shock caused by the abrupt loss of her new autonomous life, the real “joy” that kills her and not the “joy” of seeing her husband alive as the doctors suggest. The constraint of marriage is a direct cause of her death and death itself is characterized as an effect of marriage’s confinement. Therefore, when Mrs. Mallard goes back downstairs society’s grasp regains control over her and abruptly kills her, which shows the negative consequences of marriage and societal beliefs on

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Kate Chopin’s short story “The Story of an Hour” has a sad beginning, an understandable middle, but an odd ending. I was upset for Mrs. Mallard in the beginning when she learned of her husband’s death. At first, I just assumed that when Mrs. Mallard “wept at once,” she was just acting like a normal distraught wife. She had heard that her husband had died, and I thought her being upset was acceptable. I did not think anything about it until you get further along in the story.…

    • 216 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Mrs. Mallard’s character comes off as a weak woman who probably doesn’t go out much and stay’s in the shadow of her husband. After Mrs. Mallard locks herself in her room upon…

    • 1265 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Mrs. Mallard is an unsympathetic person based on her desire to become a widow, the perceived joy and freedom of her husband’s death, and the shock she faces when she realizes her husband is still alive. Mrs. Mallard felt stuck with no power and desired to become a widow because a widow had almost as much power as a man. She had two people watch over her because of her heart condition- her husband’s friend and her sister.…

    • 842 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Upon hearing the news of her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard is in a sudden grief and weeps at once. However, after she has calmed down and is alone in her room, she realizes she is now an independent woman. She sees all the spring days and summer days without her husband, and this excites her. When she acknowledges the joy, she feels possessed by it and must control herself from letting the word…

    • 771 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Kate Chopin chose to exemplify her views on marriage through the narration of the last hour of Louise Mallard's life. She highlights Louise' discontent with her married life in " The Story of an Hour" with varied sentence structure, contradiction of societal expectations, and discreet symbolism. The reader is introduced to Mrs. Mallard and her heart condition as her sister and a family friend share the news of her husbands death with her. They take care with how they convey the misfortune in order to avoid any unnecessary agitation.…

    • 604 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    author wrote this to misdirect the audience on how Mrs. Mallard really feels about her husband. Mrs. Mallard exclaims that “life might be long” showing her gain confidence herself as an individual. Towards the end of the story, Mrs. Mallard confronts her reappearing husband with shock and disappointment instead of the joy. The ironic juxtaposition is now clear that while Mrs. Mallard seemed to love her husband sometimes, she felt trapped in her marriage and the only way out to freedom was death. Chopin gives the information in the beginning immediately, to foreshadow and add significance to Mrs. Mallard's death.…

    • 1345 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    While she mourns, she then comes to a realization that with his passing, her own life can be lived, “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself”(Chopin p.13). This idea of being the author of one 's own destiny is a powerful element in both works. Its denial causes Mrs. Mallard to die of the joy that kills and the narrator to lose her sanity, underscoring its overall importance to both and to all. With both seeking the same aspect, the difference becomes the time period and their…

    • 1221 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    However, when Brently Mallard returned, Mrs. Mallard, at the glimpse of her ceased freedom, shrunk back to the women with heart problems. Chopin inserts a dramatic irony when the doctor states Mrs. Mallard died of “the joy that kills,” Chopin arguing it was not the joy that killed Mrs. Mallard, but the devastating fact that her freedom ceased to…

    • 797 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This stifles the other person’s freedom. Therefore, Mrs. Mallard and other women of the late nineteenth century most likely didn’t enjoy marriage in general, or they didn’t enjoy their marriage that they had at the moment. Much like Mrs. Mallard’s enjoying the hour of her independence, she enjoys being free. The day before Brently Mallard dies, Mrs. Mallard “[thinks] with a shudder that life might be long” (Chopin page 2), but now she really hopes that she will live longer. Basically, Mrs. Mallard wanted a short life before the death of her husband, but afterwards, she wants a long life.…

    • 395 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour," we see a marriage that is complicated by the fact Louise feels constrained in the marriage. The relationship Louise has with her husband appears to be a normal one as the story begins. She is distraught and appears saddened by the news that her husband has been killed in an accident going so far as to weep “with sudden, wild abandonment” when told (Chopin). The marriage between the two is loving, but Louise feels trapped in it.…

    • 298 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The “Joy That Kills” Before the latter half of the twentieth century, it was generally assumed that women would be the keepers of the household but would keep their opinions to themselves. Because women were considered inferior creatures needing the guidance of men, they often lived according to the dictates, morals, and tastes of their husbands or fathers. Women had little choice in where they went and even whom they married—and they were rarely encouraged to think for themselves. As a result, some women felt a conflict between their own wills and the rules of society. This conflict is dramatically narrated in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” written in 1894.…

    • 394 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When Mrs. Mallard dies at the end, however, the doctors assume it is from “joy that kills” (Chopin). This is an example of dramatic irony because the reader knows it wasn’t joy at seeing her husband alive that killed Mrs. Mallard but disappointment at seeing that he’s not dead. In this moment she realizes has lost her freedom from her husband and marriage. It was the lack of these, her husband and marriage, that allowed her to feel free, changing from repressed to independent, and it is their reappearance that returns her to such repression that she dies because of it.…

    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The Story of An Hour - Literary Analysis Marriage in the 1800’s was essentially an idea of a woman being the man’s property. In “The Story of An Hour,” Chopin represents a negative view of marriage by portraying a woman’s relief and joy upon her husband’s death, resulting in the examination of a female’s self-discovery of identity that was lost while fulfilling the role of a good wife. Chopin presents this through the setting of the text as Mrs.Mallard’s emotions transition from numbness to newfound joy. “The Story of An Hour” communicates the transition of a soul moving from being trapped in a cage of domesticity, like a small bird, to of the free, spring world, showing that nature and the soul are connected, as shown through the different…

    • 1145 Words
    • Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    She begins to rejoice in the new kind of life she will lead, without having to tend to her husband’s desires when suddenly her husband walks in the front door unharmed and confused. Mrs. Mallard’s conflicting heart illness was ultimately her demise but it was truly due to “a joy that kills” (Chopin,…

    • 1222 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Mallard expresses the evidence of her life. She is described as “young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression” (288). Her youth is intact and draws the idea that she was a young girl, not ready to be tied down when she married. The tranquility of her face, and the later description of her “dull stare” (288) suggests a sense of compliance. Her overbearing marriage has tranquilized her into submission.…

    • 1351 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays