Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

Decent Essays
Zachary Saathoff
Mr. May T-07
November 14, 2017
Tick Tock
Have you ever gotten terrible news? Of course, you have, well in the beginning of the story, "The Story of an Hour" written by Kate Chopin there is awful news. The news consists of Louise Mallard's husband passing away. The story was written in 1894, therefore, women in the story didn't have very much power. According to history women lived a life consisting of working and silence. Do you think women liked living a life of silence?
Kate Chopin conveys an alternating theme of grief and love in The Story of an Hour in a fascinating but a peculiar authentic manner more than any other literary work I know about. Through Mrs. Mallard, Chopin expresses grief and emotional dilemma surrounding

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
  • Improved Essays

    Diversified authors will use diversified strategies to catch the attention of the reader. Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman are women that were ahead of their time; they both wrote stories that were socially unacceptable but now they are considered the greatest stories. In Kates Chopin’s short story “The story of an hour” the advocate Mrs. Mallard, she suddenly died of a heart attack after she hears of her husband’s death. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote the short story of “the yellow wallpaper” with a sacrilegious plot at the time: A women, Jane confined to her bed because of nervous depression, she begins to observe a women underneath the wallpaper of their rented mansion. By the end of the story,…

    • 1101 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Mallard's Irony

    • 822 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In today’s society, women see themselves as the victim; all they want to have is a voice handed to them on a silver platter. They get to a point where they have been quiet for so long that they need something drastic to happen to get unstuck. In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” the main character, Louise Mallard, becomes extremely cornered behind her husband that she does not feel released until his unexpected death. Therefore, when he appeared alive in the end, Mrs. Mallard returned to her old ways, which led to death. The main conflict in the story does not emerge from gender issues, but it derives from the internal struggle that a woman has to speak for herself; this is supported by Chopin’s use of irony, symbolism, and repetition.…

    • 822 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Response to Literature The author, Kate Chopin, wrote a short story titled “The Story of an Hour” which took place in the Mallard family around the 18th century. In the short story, the main character, Mrs. Mallard experiences freedom rather than experiencing loneliness after she learns that her husband was dead. She also had a heart condition which played a big role to the end of the story. Mrs. Mallard did not like her marriage because she didn’t want her husband ordering her what to do all the time. Later in the story, when Mrs. Mallard learns that her husband, Brently, is still alive, she knew that all hope of freedom was gone, and the crushing disappointment kills Mrs. Mallard.…

    • 722 Words
    • 3 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

    An Hour Sacrifice

    • 182 Words
    • 1 Pages

    In The Story of An Hour, Kate Chopin records a short period of Mrs. Mallard’s life —from the moment she hears the news of her husband’s death to the moment he unexpectedly returns. Mrs. Mallard’s reaction directly reveals that marriage is limiting for women in the nineteenth century. Unlike other women, Mrs. Mallard chooses to face her husband's death alone. It means that she is a strong woman, and she always has a mind of her own.…

    • 182 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Katherine O’Flaherty, also known as Kate Chopin after her marriage, wrote many stories, but one of her most famous ones was “The Story of an Hour”, written on April 19th, 1894 (“The Story”). The original name of the story was “The Dream of an Hour” but Kate changed it after begin published by Vogue on December 6th that same year (“The Story”). Kate being born in St. Louis, Missouri, gave her many experiences and hardships as a woman. Kate grew up in the era of enfranchisement for white males, where no woman was equal to men; she wrote this short story to show female empowerment because woman had no rights and were seen as “inferior” to men (“The Story”). Here, we are going to be evaluating the elements within “The Story of an Hour”.…

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Most individuals enter a marriage with certain expectations; they expect to be loved, cared for, cherished and above all, respected. However, this is not always the case. Marriage can quickly transform from a wonderful holy union to a dangerous and oppressive force. In Sandra Cisneros’ “Women Hollering Creek,” and Kate Chopin’s “The Story Of An Hour,” we are told the story of two women whose expectations of marriage failed in comparison to their reality, as well as how drastically this influenced their mental stability and actions during and after their marriage. The stories express how all marriages, even the kindest unions, may be inherently oppressive.…

    • 1644 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the article “Fatal Self-Assertion in Kate Chopin’s, The Story of an Hour” written by Lawrence L. Berkove says, “this story is not about society or marriage, but Louise Mallard” (Berkove, par.2). It really makes sense as Chopin never talks about anyone else, the only person who describes the thoughts, ways of seeing life, and feelings is Louise Mallard. Also how in most of the story refers to Mrs. Mallard, but when her husband died she is referred as Louise Mallard. Many details are missing in the story, but with even those few details I can say that she did not die because of someone else. She died because she was afraid of…

    • 1059 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” is more than a grieving widow experiencing euphoria and finding her sense of self; it’s a statement of how a woman’s value and independence was worth during the 19th century. A wife was few more than a trophy for their husbands to showcase towards his fellow compatriots with children and homemaking skills being her only noteworthy talents. The life and death of Louise Mallard shed light on marriage being equivalent to surrendering one’s identity as an individual. The introduction of Mrs. Mallard described her as a meek young woman with a weak heart. Upon being told the news, she grieved loudly over her husband’s sudden death as if she had forgotten how coddling he was.…

    • 1437 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Realism Research Paper Throughout the course of history, literature has been focused on themes such as religion, political independence, and romance. America had never really been exposed to the harsh truths of life that people faced. Then around the nineteenth century, Realism was introduced; a movement that showcased reality. The Realism movement was a polar opposite of previous topics.…

    • 1212 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior 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
  • Improved Essays

    Many writers often write poems, short stories and other pieces of writing about things that had affected them in the past or about events that they had experienced in their early life. Katherine O 'Flaherty well known as Kate Chopin was a novelist and short story writer of the 20th century and was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Even though much of Chopin life was defined by the deaths of those close to her, I believe that she didn 't face many problems similar to those of Mrs. Mallard. This essay will show some background information about Kate Chopin early life and how it has some differences in the life of Mrs. Mallard in the short story "the story of an hour" by Kate Chopin. Kate Chopin most popular piece of work today is called "The story…

    • 1214 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” is a fictional piece that chronicles the aftermath of a woman hearing that her husband is dead. The protagonist, Mrs. Mallard becomes afflicted by the news and seeks alone time to cope with the loss of her significant other. Upset, Mrs. Mallard retreats to her room where she has a revelation that changes her complexion towards the death of her husband. Instead of being filled with grief, Mrs. Mallard becomes calm and relaxed with a new outlook on life. However, when Mrs. Mallard heads downstairs to rejoin her family, she sees a man walk through the front door.…

    • 1808 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin represents marriage in a negative view. It does this by exposing the reader to a woman who experiences joy at the news of her husband’s death. This is most clearly seen through the language of the story that Chopin uses. The narrator of the story relates what is observed by using prose, but when the emotions of Louise are described, the words tend to always be powerful. This turn of language suggests a more interesting inner-life the character lives that is not really connected to anything from the outside world of the other characters of the story, like her husband.…

    • 1202 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays