The story of an hour

Literary essay
The story of an Hour
The loss of one’s spouse is surely a terrible thing. To lose the one you love, and to become a widow must be heart-breaking. But can the death of a woman’s husband lead to freedom? In “The story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin we meet a woman whose husband has tragically died in a railroad disaster. The story is about a widow, and how she handles the death of her husband.
The setting of the story is the home of Mr. and Mrs. Mallard. The story takes place in approximately mid 1800’s, in a time where the man of the house is the one in charge, and women are oppressed, or to put it another way, the woman is supposed to stay at home whilst the man goes to work. Therefore Mrs. Mallard has somehow been “trapped” in their house, being forced into the role of a good wife under the power of the husband. In their marriage she lives for her husband, however that changes when she believes that he has passed: “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself” (ll. 13-14, p. 107). When Mrs. Mallard receives the news of her husband’s death, she immediately starts crying uncontrollably in her sister’s arms. She does not get paralyzed by grief, as she knows many other women in her situation would do, “She did not hear the story as many other women have heard with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance” (ll. 11-12, p. 106). She knows she should grieve over her husband, but she can’t show the emotions which are expected of her, so instead she cries dramatically. When she is alone in her room, she unveils her true emotion, which is excitement over her newfound independence. This feeling of freedom suddenly hits her, and she can’t help but to say the words out loud "Free, free, free!" (ll. 1-2, p. 107). She is not a heartless person, and the excitement she feels is not caused by the fact that her husband is dead, it is caused by the possibilities that his death has given her. She knows she will cry at his funeral, and she doesn’t doubt his love for her. "What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possesion of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!" (ll 20-21, p. 107) she calls love an “unsolved mystery” which means that she has not experienced true love. Therefore it must mean that she has never loved her husband, like he loved her. Instead she has felt oppressed by him, and their marriage. Now that her husband is no longer there, she feels self-assertion as an impulse similar to love. She has replaced love with a confidence in herself. She imagines what her future would be like. Where most women in her place would fear for a future without a man, she believes that a life alone will bring many opportunities that she could not have had in the marriage with her husband. Alone, she is free from the burden their marriage laid upon her “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” (ll. 14-16, p. 107). In the hour where she believes that her husband is dead, her heart races with excitement. The heart trouble she suffers from shows how deeply the oppression of their marriage troubled her. It was not only an emotional problem for her it was also a physical one. When her husband is no longer there, she can even feel the independence physically “Free! Body and soul free!" (l 23, p. 107). The moment she sees her husband standing before her, alive, the heart troubles comes back and eventually becomes the death of her. Mrs. Mallards heart trouble is a symbol of both her ambivalence towards their marriage, and that it takes away her freedom. Her death in the end of the story is caused by her heart trouble, and the doctors say that she had died of “joy that kills” (l. 9, p. 108). The shock of seeing her husband alive, seems to be the most obvious reason for her death. The diagnosis that the doctors give is based in the assumption that every wife would be overwhelmed by joy when their husbands return. However Mrs. Mallard is not like that, and the true joy she felt in her life was when she was free of the oppressing marriage. Instead it was the loss of joy that killed her, as she was robbed her independence when her husband returned.
The theme of the story can be seen in the development of Mrs. Mallard where she finds true joy in freedom as a woman. In “The story of an Hour” it is shown that a woman feels freedom and independence by the death of her husband, in a time where a woman without a man should feel lost and hopeless. The story takes place in a time where marriage is an institution that oppresses women.