Suffering from severe “heart trouble (1)”, Louise is already in a delicate state when she hears this grave message from her sister Josephine along with Brently’s friend, Richards. Though now she is obviously filled with grief, her reaction doesn’t suggest any hatred, and Louise knows that she’ll cry at her husband’s funeral. However, despite the love between husband and wife, Louise views Brently’s death as a release from oppression. Louise, who readily admits that her husband was kind and loving; nonetheless, she feels joy when she believes that he has died (13). It can be understood from the story that she loved him, because she had to and it being her duty, especially during the period of the 1800s as a well-established woman. Now seemingly alone, Louise begins to realize that she is now an independent woman, an awareness that enlivens and excites her. The heart trouble that afflicts Louise seems to be both a physical and symbolic condition that shows her doubt toward her marriage and unhappiness with her lack of freedom. The fact that Louise has heart trouble is the first thing we learn about her, and this heart trouble is what seems to make the announcement of Brently’s death so threatening. It is revealed in that story that while she now rests in her room, she “whispers under her quiet breath over and over, “free, free, free” (11 ).” A person with a weak heart, after all, would not deal well with such news and as she reflects on her new independence, her heart races, pumping blood through her veins. When she dies at the end of the story, the diagnosis of “heart disease” seems right because the shock of seeing her husband alive again was surely enough to kill her. But the doctors’ conclusion stating that “she had died of heart disease – of joy that kills (23)” the overwhelming joy seems quite strange because it had been the
Suffering from severe “heart trouble (1)”, Louise is already in a delicate state when she hears this grave message from her sister Josephine along with Brently’s friend, Richards. Though now she is obviously filled with grief, her reaction doesn’t suggest any hatred, and Louise knows that she’ll cry at her husband’s funeral. However, despite the love between husband and wife, Louise views Brently’s death as a release from oppression. Louise, who readily admits that her husband was kind and loving; nonetheless, she feels joy when she believes that he has died (13). It can be understood from the story that she loved him, because she had to and it being her duty, especially during the period of the 1800s as a well-established woman. Now seemingly alone, Louise begins to realize that she is now an independent woman, an awareness that enlivens and excites her. The heart trouble that afflicts Louise seems to be both a physical and symbolic condition that shows her doubt toward her marriage and unhappiness with her lack of freedom. The fact that Louise has heart trouble is the first thing we learn about her, and this heart trouble is what seems to make the announcement of Brently’s death so threatening. It is revealed in that story that while she now rests in her room, she “whispers under her quiet breath over and over, “free, free, free” (11 ).” A person with a weak heart, after all, would not deal well with such news and as she reflects on her new independence, her heart races, pumping blood through her veins. When she dies at the end of the story, the diagnosis of “heart disease” seems right because the shock of seeing her husband alive again was surely enough to kill her. But the doctors’ conclusion stating that “she had died of heart disease – of joy that kills (23)” the overwhelming joy seems quite strange because it had been the