Story Of An Hour Literary Analysis
Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour”
Finding happiness is most people’s ultimate goal in life. In “Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin uses irony to emphasize the distress of women with their lives and in their marriages during this time period. In the 1800’s, women felt oppressed by men, yet they were very dependent on them at the same time. Like Mrs. Mallard, women had a desire for freedom and living their life for themselves, but this was looked down upon and very abnormal in that time. With the news of her husband’s passing, Mrs. Mallard seems to automatically change her outlook on life, and seems to have an identity… she is not just someone wife. All of the characters in the story pay close attention to how fragile Louise Mallard is. With the return of her husband, she experiences only moments of freedom, before the return of her oppression causes her to drop dead.
It is clear quite early after the news of her husband’s passing that Mrs. Mallard finally felt as if she was freed from oppression. “There would be no powerful will bending her”(14) This implies that she never really felt like she had a voice or an opinion in the marriage, “In that blind persistence which men and women believe they have a right to impose a …show more content…
Mallard an identity; Louise. This sheds her persona of just being someone’s wife and turns her into an individual. With her new freedom, it is almost like Louise sees the whole world differently, “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of the trees that were all aquiver with new spring life.”(5) Her husband has just died... or so she thinks… and she is just finally seeing the beauty in the world around her. “She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she has thought with a shudder that life might be long.”(17) Now that her husband has died she is glad that life is going to be long because she doesn’t have to spend the rest of hers with
Finding happiness is most people’s ultimate goal in life. In “Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin uses irony to emphasize the distress of women with their lives and in their marriages during this time period. In the 1800’s, women felt oppressed by men, yet they were very dependent on them at the same time. Like Mrs. Mallard, women had a desire for freedom and living their life for themselves, but this was looked down upon and very abnormal in that time. With the news of her husband’s passing, Mrs. Mallard seems to automatically change her outlook on life, and seems to have an identity… she is not just someone wife. All of the characters in the story pay close attention to how fragile Louise Mallard is. With the return of her husband, she experiences only moments of freedom, before the return of her oppression causes her to drop dead.
It is clear quite early after the news of her husband’s passing that Mrs. Mallard finally felt as if she was freed from oppression. “There would be no powerful will bending her”(14) This implies that she never really felt like she had a voice or an opinion in the marriage, “In that blind persistence which men and women believe they have a right to impose a …show more content…
Mallard an identity; Louise. This sheds her persona of just being someone’s wife and turns her into an individual. With her new freedom, it is almost like Louise sees the whole world differently, “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of the trees that were all aquiver with new spring life.”(5) Her husband has just died... or so she thinks… and she is just finally seeing the beauty in the world around her. “She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she has thought with a shudder that life might be long.”(17) Now that her husband has died she is glad that life is going to be long because she doesn’t have to spend the rest of hers with