Story Of An Hour Irony

Kate Chopin's The Story of An Hour makes effective use of only a few pages to embody a woman's perspective into marriage during the 1800s. In the short story, Chopin depicts the life of a married woman through an omnipresent narration and allows us, as the readers, to obtain additional insight that is unknown to the stories other characters. Through the use of this type of narration we are able to develop an understanding of the unhappiness Mrs. Mallard has experienced with being married to her husband. With this information we are able to see the irony in the doctor’s diagnosis at the conclusion of the story. The story comes to an end with the doctor describing the cause of Mrs. Mallard’s death as "the joy that kills". By using the information collected while reading the story we can see the grief experienced by Mrs. Mallard over the thought of her husband's death was just temporary. We can then infer that it was the shock of realizing that both her husband, and marriage, are still part of her life meaning she has not escaped her unhappiness.
The story opens with Chopin foreshadowing the death of Mrs. Mallards. The first sentence of the story explains to us Mrs. Mallard’s heart is in a weakened state "Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, care was taken to break to her as gently …show more content…
Mallard’s death was from heart disease, her heart giving out after experiencing the joy that kills. They are partially correct, her heart failing was the cause of her death, but it wasn’t the joy that killed her. Mrs. Mallard had a glimpse at a life without her husband, and then the return of her husband, and therefore the return of her unhappy life was too much for her to bear. Her freedom was taken away from her once again, and with it, this time, was her life. Mrs. Mallard could not handle the strain physically or mentally, of returning to the life that she, for the past hour, had begun to