The Story of an Hour

The story of an hour”


Kate Chopin’s “The story of an hour” perceives this
seemingly normal middle-class family with an extensive
amount of colorful irony. Louise Mallard is a housewife who
tries to lead the most standard life possible with her
all-powerful husband.The many years of marriage has brought
the feeling of emptiness and vacancy into the soul of Louise
Mallard. Through her tribulations of marriage, releasing
herself and setting both her body and mind free, and the
deaths throughout the story irony encompasses and unifies
this short story.
The tribulations of Mr. and Mrs. Mallard’s marriage
escalated through the feeling of love. Love seemed to be no
longer a never-ending bond between the most important person
in their life, but yet a chore, something they regretfully
did everyday. “And yet she had loved him-sometimes. Often
she had not-What did it matter!”(13) When told of the news
or her husband’s death, Louise Mallard reacted in the only
way she knew how; she completed her “job” as the wife by
storming into tears and weeping in her sister’s arms. She
felt no horror or shock, just grief that this person, this
“friend”, had passed away. “She did not hear the story as
many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability
to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden
wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms.”(12) The irony had
finally creeped through into her life, her inexplicable and
“sometimes” loving marriage had finally come to a sudden
halt; Louise Mallard no longer had her dreadful job.
The feeling of freedom, the feeling Louise Mallard
never knew still existed warmed her body from head to toe.
Although the news of someone’s husband dying would come as a
complete shock to most, Mrs. Mallard looked upon this
despairing moment as a time to finally set... [continues]

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