Story Of An Hour Literary Analysis

Aristotle once wisely said, “Happiness depends upon ourselves.” However, having to provide for your own happiness is difficult to do, and hard to maintain. Kate Chopin’s short story, The Story of an Hour introduces a character that shows just that. When the protagonist, Mrs. Louise Mallard learns of her husband’s death, she is devastated at first, but then feels a strange sense of relief. She realizes that she can live the life that she wants for herself, and be who she wants to be. Knowing her aforementioned heart troubles, she visualized her husband, Brently, walking through the front door and died of a heart attack. She thought that she could take advantage of the new opportunity that was presented for her with joy, but the guilt from being
Mallard starts to go through this strange emotional state after she learns her husband died. She locks herself in her bedroom, and starts to take in all of her surroundings. “She could see the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air...There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window” (5-6). She was just so emotionally drained that all she could do was stare and focus on all of the beauty around her and not all of the ugliness of death that was radiating near her. As she was alone in her bedroom, the narrator explains that she starts to feel something approaching her. “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully...She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will - as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been” (9-10). Later on, she realizes that “thing” was relief. She could do as she wishes and finally admit that she didn’t love her husband as much as she thought she did. This is where the mood starts to change. It’s originally very depressing, but now it’s becoming much more happy. “There would be no one to live for during those coming years, she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature...And yet she had loved him - sometimes. Often she had not” (13-14). It seems as though Mrs. Mallard was actually happy for once; but as mentioned before, making yourself happy is hard to