Does Psyche Affect One's Health In The Story Of An Hour

Story of An Hour: Does One’s Psyche Affect One’s Health The Story of an Hour is about one hour in the life of Louise Mallard, tragically ending with her death. The doctors arrive announcing the cause of death heart disease---of a joy that kills. The first line of this short story originally diagnoses Louise with only a “heart trouble” and yet in the expanse of one hour she is dead supposedly from joy at seeing her husband alive as the last words of the story led the reader to believe. Or ironically is it death from almost obtaining joyous freedom and independence? Louise Mallard was told of her husband’s death gently as possible due to a heart trouble. No other explanation is given to what this heart trouble is, she was a young, childless women, untouched by sickness and
There is no doubt Louise’s grief over her husband’s death is genuine, “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment” she is honestly sad that her husband is gone, (99) “she had loved him – sometimes. Often she had not.”(101). Louise was not physically abused, loved by her husband “the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her”. (100) yet by all accounts she is dying from an unknown heart trouble, treated with the care with the news of her husband’s death. After her blast of grief is past she takes to her room, to sit in her comfortable chair, symbolic of a rest from the expectations of her place in society that have oppressed her identity and restricted her freedoms. It is here exhausted from grief in front of an open window, looking outside that she can see “tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air” (99). Louise comes to see the possibility of a new life opening and springing forth,