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The story of an hour annotations1/10/2024 ![]() As Louise processes the news of her husband’s death, she realizes something wonderful and terrible at the same time: she is free. Upon hearing the news of her husband’s death, Louise is grief-stricken, locks herself in her room, and weeps.įrom here, the story shifts in tone. Richards had been at the newspaper office when the news broke, and he takes Josephine with him to break the news to Louise since they’re afraid of aggravating her heart condition. Louise Mallard is at home when her sister, Josephine, and her husband’s friend, Richards, come to tell her that her husband, Brently Mallard, has been killed in a railroad accident. We recommend you read it again before diving into our analyses in the next section!įor those who just need a refresher, here’s “The Story of an Hour” summary: This section includes a quick recap, but you can find “The Story of an Hour” PDF and full version here. If it’s been a little while since you’ve read Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” it can be hard to remember the important details. Analysis of the key story elements in “The Story of an Hour,” including themes, characters, and symbolsīy the end of this article, you’ll have an expert grasp on Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour.” So let’s get started!.A brief history of Kate Chopin and America the 1890s.In this guide to Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” we’ll discuss: It was in this world that author Kate Chopin wrote and lived, and many of the issues of the period are reflected in her short story, “The Story of an Hour.” Now, over a century later, the story remains one of Kate Chopin’s most well-known works and continues to shed light on the internal struggle of women who have been denied autonomy. While this world might sound like the present day, it also describes America in the 1890s. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.Imagine a world where women are fighting for unprecedented rights, the economic climate is unpredictable, and new developments in technology are made every year. The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. If you enjoyed this analysis of ‘The Story of an Hour’, you might also enjoy Anton Chekhov’s 1900 story ‘At Christmas Time’, to which Chopin’s story has been compared.ĭiscover more of Kate Chopin’s fine stories, including ‘The Story of an Hour’, in The Awakening And Other Stories (Oxford World’s Classics). But the (presumably male) doctors who attended her death would not have assumed any such thing: they would have analysed her death as a result of her love for her husband, and the sheer joy she felt at having him back.Ĭhopin’s story also foreshadows Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Garden Party’, and Laura Sheridan’s enigmatic emotional reaction to seeing her first dead body (as with Chopin’s story, a man who has died in an accident). ![]() So it was not joy but disappointment, if anything, that brought on the heart attack that killed her. Then, there’s a key in the front door and who should enter but … Mrs Mallard’s husband, Brently Mallard.Ĭonsider the final sentence of the story: ‘When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease – of joy that kills.’ The irony, of course, is that Louisa appears to have accepted her husband’s death and to have taken his demise as a chance to liberate herself from an oppressive marriage (note Chopin’s reference to the lines on her face which ‘bespoke repression and even a certain strength’ – what did she need that strength for, we wonder?). Richards is still down there, waiting for them. ![]() Eventually she opens the door and she and Josephine go back downstairs. She used to dread the prospect of living to a ripe old age, but now she welcomes such a prospect. But Louise doesn’t feel ill: she feels on top of the world. But now, that didn’t matter: what matters is the ‘self-assertion’, the declaration of independence, that her life alone represents a new start.īut then, her sister Josephine calls from outside the door for her to come out, worried that Louise is making herself ill. She reflects that she had loved her husband – sometimes. She dreads seeing her husband’s face (as she knows she must, when she goes to identify the body), but she knows that beyond that lie years and years of her life yet to be lived, and ‘would all belong to her absolutely’. Now her husband is dead, it seems, she feels free. Then, gradually, a feeling begins to form within her: a sense of freedom.
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