cridical analysis of "the Story of An Hour" by Kate Chopin

“The Story of An Hour”

Kate Chopin (1894)

………The Meek and frail Mrs. Mallard is the point of interest in The Story of An Hour, by Kate Chopin. This nameless woman was newly abandoned by her husband, who was a victim of an accident.  She seemed to be frail, unable to care for herself, and doomed to a life indebted to others. However as the events unravel, she seemed to be finding a more desirable path, that widens as she travels it. As a blossoming feminist she began to put her thoughts and goals in order, and makes the final and ultimate feministic sacrifice.

………Mrs. Mallard’s response to her sister Josephine, an apprehensive carrier of new about the untimely death of Bently Mallard, was foreshadowing to the upcoming events. She embraced the news instantly experiencing the grief and abandonment. Most women’s grief would have been put off by the paralyses of shock. Subsequently, she made a hasty retreat to the isolation of her room, instead of the comfort of her sister’s arms. Her seemingly unnatural response to the news makes way for questions of her contentment in her marriage.

……..In the private setting of her room she fended off the routine that her frail body and the confines of her marriage imposed. The solitude friend that awaited her was a comfortable chair in front of a window that views a world out of her reach. But, when the illness that haunts her body reached up to suck the remaining life from her soul, she pulled strength from the birthing life outside her window. The creatures in the trees and the pureness of the rain filled air breathed hope back in to her young body, and with the restraints of marriage removed she embraced the invitation of the peddler in the street and the calls of the birds.

……..She began to view life as a new opportunity that waits for her to claim it. The clearing clouds, revealed a brighter sky, that invited her to follow the sun to the West, and seemed symbolic of her new beginning. She dismissed the final sobs accompanying the shock that came with the departing of her husband, and then seized the promise of freedom. She could then live life as her own. While reveling in her new found freedom a name was called out, her name, Louise, no longer to be Mrs. Anybody.

……..The freedom gave her a new strength over her physical body. Answering her sisters beckoning, Louise replied to her, “I am not making myself ill”(Kate Chopin 1894 para 16). Her realization allowed her to fanaticize about a future filled with independence and a long life. She had triumphed over her husband and would be able to be ruler over her own life.

……..Ill equipped for feminine independence, Louise asserted her strength a first and final time; Mr. Mallard returned home after unknowingly missing his opportunity with death. Stepping through the front door, he threatens to take back Louise’s new found stalwartness. In a climatic moment Louise took jurisdiction over her own life and ceases her own mortal existence.