1. Critical Collage
This short story, which takes place in the small time frame of one hour, was
written in the year 1894. It is set in Brently and Louise Mallard’s two story home. The
story begins by noting that “Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble.” The first
event of the story happens in the next paragraph. Louise’s sister, Josephine, and her
husband’s friend, Richards, tell her about a terrible “railroad disaster” that has taken the
life of her husband, Brently. Louise’s first reaction to the news is to weep “with sudden,
wild abandonment, into her sister’s arms.”
The next paragraph notes that she doesn’t take the news like many other women
would have, “with the paralyzed inability to accept its significance.” But instead, Mrs.
Mallard is immediately convinced that Richards is telling the truth, and begins to cry.
After this happened, a physical exhaustion comes over her and she retires to her
bedroom upstairs to be alone. As she sinks into a chair by the window, she begins to look
outside and describe the beauty before her. Though she is still sobbing at this point, it is
clear that she is beginning to see life in a new way. She describes the view outside her
window to be full of “new spring life.” The next paragraph talks about her physical
features. She is described as young with a calm face with lines that “bespoke repression
and even a certain strength.” After this, she begins to feel a “subtle and elusive” thought
coming over her that she cannot name. At first, she fights off the thing that wishes to
possess her, but ultimately loses. It isn’t until after the thing possesses her that she
realizes what it is. When she does finally recognize what she is feeling, she whispers to
herself, “free, free, free!” On the surface, she begins to realize the freedom that comes
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with being a widow. She admits to not having loved her husband for most of their
marriage. She recognizes self-assertion as “the strongest impulse of her being.”
At this point, Louise has convinced herself that becoming a widow is the best
possible outcome for her life. She becomes very obviously thrilled about her new status
as a widow. And it is at this point that her sister, Josephine, calls for her sister to open
the door. Louise “breathed a quick prayer that life might be long,” whereas only the day
before she shuddered at the thought.
When she did open the door and exit her bedroom, she carries herself
“unwittingly like a goddess of Victory” and hugs her sister tightly as they descend the
stairs together. When they get to the bottom of the stairs, Louise’s husband, Brently
Mallard, opens the door and comes inside. “He had been far from the scene of the
accident, and did not even know there had been one.” Upon seeing her husband alive in
the flesh, Louise dies instantly. “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart
disease – of the joy that kills.”
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Explication
“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin is one with many ironically provocative
elements; the most interesting element being the perception of Louise’s character through
the people closest to her. In the beginning of story, we are introduced to the main
character, Louise Mallard, for the first time. What Chopin does here is place in our
minds the idea of a fragile woman by describing her for the first time as someone who
“was afflicted with heart trouble,” and for that reason, “Great care was taken to break to
her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.” If we skip down to the last
line of the story, we get the same idea again. “When the doctors came they said she had
died of heart disease – of the joy that kills.” If one were to skip everything but these two
lines, the first and the last, of the story, it would be safe to assume that her fragile state is
the cause of her death. What becomes evident when reading the story through is that
Mrs. Mallard’s weakness, physical or otherwise, is a false identifier that we only learn
through the actions of her friends. Even the closest people in Louise’s life can’t see the
strong and independent woman she so desires to be.
The lines following the beginning seem to portray Richards and Josephine as
gentle and loving characters. Josephine begins to tell her sister the news “in broken
sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing.” Richards rushes to Louise’s
home after learning the news to prevent “less careful, less tender friend [from] bearing
the sad message.” These characters, the people whom Louise probably considers closest
to her, know nothing of the dreams she has of a life independent from her husband. They
have no concept of whether or not she is happy. They know her first and foremost as the
woman with heart trouble.
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It isn’t until Louise is sitting alone in her room, away from her friend and sister,
that her true character comes to light. She is filled with thoughts that people during this
time would have thought absurd. She becomes liberated with her newfound freedom,
“drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.” This is a woman who was
just deemed too fragile to accept the news of her husband’s death and has now turned that
very tragedy into her own personal victory. When she exits the room there is a “feverish
triumph in her eyes.” Of course Josephine waits by the door for her sister to exit, worried
that Louise is making herself ill, and Richards is at the bottom of the stairs watching her
as she descends them. Both of the characters are still clueless as to the self-discovery
Louise has just made. The end is quick and filled with action that ends in the reveal of
Louise’s death. The irony concludes the story, enveloping it from beginning to end. The
characters remain in the same mindset that Louise Mallard is a weak woman. They never
get to see the person that she is underneath, nor the way in which she exceeded that
person moments before her death to become even more independent. They will
remember her forever as the woman who had heart problems, who was too weak to bear
the news of her husband’s death, and who died of joy over witnessing his return.
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New Historicism
Louise Mallard loved her husband, and her husband loved her. Their relationship
wasn’t abusive, nor was she neglected. When Louise describes her husband, she does so
fondly, using the words “kind” and “tender.” Why is it, then, that when her husband
passed, the first thing she thought of was her freedom? And if independence truly is “the
strongest impulse of her being,” as stated in the story, why did she ever marry at all?
In order to understand Louise Mallard, we have to put ourselves in the mindset of
women in the late 1800’s, when this story was written. Women didn’t have the rights
that we do now, and were thought to be more of a possession rather than an equal. A
single woman wouldn’t have had the ability to support herself, financially. An online
source states that, “In the 1890’s, only about seventeen percent of women worked outside
of the home. Besides farm work, their jobs were mainly in traditional women’s fields
such as teaching, nursing, and domestic service” (Fabian). Even with a job of this type, it
would be next to impossible for any woman to support herself without the superior
income of a male counterpart.
Additionally, it would not have been uncommon for a single woman to be
socially exiled by the people within her community. Voting rights for women weren’t
even established until the nineteenth amendment for women’s suffrage was ratified in
1919, twenty-five years after this story was published. Between the social stigmas
placed on women to be married, and the inability to make enough money to support
themselves, women were left to be ruled by their husbands, with absolutely no way out.
Whether or not Louise Mallard loved her husband, it is easy to empathize with her
excitement over the freedom that came with his death. To be widowed was almost like
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finding a loophole to the desperate housewives of the late 1800’s. They were able to
support themselves with their late husbands’ inheritance, while also enjoying the
independence they never would have experienced otherwise.
I don’t doubt that Louise Mallard loved her husband. She even makes it a point to
dwell on those feelings when describing the face of her husband that “had never looked
save with love upon her.” I also think, however, that the amount of love she felt toward
her husband was matched with an equal amount of resentment for, not necessarily him,
but her role as a woman, which eventually resulted in a misplaced joy over his death.
This isn’t a story about love or marriage, but a campaign for women’s rights
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Feminist Criticism
It is apparent that Louise Mallard feels oppressed in her marriage to Brently
Mallard, but to what extent? Is it just the contract of marriage that she feels dominated
by, or does love itself play a role in the oppression that holds her? Mrs. Mallard’s first
instinct in paragraph 13 is to say that she had loved her husband. She immediately cuts
off the thought, countering it with “sometimes,” followed by, “Often she had not.” This
intentional reversal of thought brought on by Chopin demands answers. Why would she
deny the love she so evidently has for her husband? Who is it benefiting to backtrack her
original statement and reverse it completely?
Perhaps she feels guilt for thinking these horrible things and needs to justify them
to herself. Paragraph 11 states that “She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a
monstrous joy that held her,” but instead, “dismiss[es] the suggestion as trivial.” Louise
realizes the fact that her joy over her husband’s death is immoral, but chooses not to even
consciously hold those thoughts in her mind. Again, this could be a result of guilt for the
joy she has.
Love and marriage are but two of the numerous powerful beings which oppress
Louise’s character. Mrs. Mallard isn’t aware of the state of oppression she is living in
until the death of her husband. When her husband was still living, freedom wasn’t yet
possible. It is only after his death that those feelings surface. For Louise Mallard, the
feelings she has toward marriage are the same as every other woman’s during this time.
This isn’t to say she can’t comprehend freedom from her oppressed state, but that it is a
much harder idea for her to grasp than it would be if she were living in 2013. Many, if
not all women, most likely expressed these fantasies, but that is all they were. So another
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question that could be explored now is, could it be possible that Louise Mallard is
oppressed, not by love or marriage alone, but by her own self?
The second Mrs. Mallard’s husband dies, she becomes an outcast to her gender
role. No longer is she the loving housewife whose only job is to tend to her husband.
Perhaps the fear of the unknown is another oppressive being which entraps her. The only
thing she can do, knows how to do, and has ever done, she no longer can. Without her
husband, her own life has no meaning. Just as a slave only lived to please his master, a
woman’s only duty was to her husband. It is easy to assume she felt that if the one
person whom she lived all her days for suddenly wasn’t there anymore, what would
become of her?
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Psychoanalytic Criticism
“The Story of an Hour” is, just that, taking place in one hour. All of the emotions,
the trials, the disappointments, and the revelations that Louise Mallard is confronted with
throughout the story are taking place minutes apart from one another. Additionally, there
are a limited amount of characters within the piece, and only one for a large portion of the
time, meaning that the majority of the conflict that arises in the story takes place within
Louise’s mind. In the beginning of the story Louise is described as a weak hearted
woman, both mentally and physically, but her character grows more bold and brave as the
story develops. This sudden change in character may be due to her pre-conscious
surfacing, divulging for the first time thoughts she had never let herself become
consciously aware of while her husband was alive.
Freud’s idea of the separation between the conscious, pre-conscious, and
unconscious mind is an interesting tool to use when analyzing the development of Louise
Mallard’s character. Louise’s conscious mind until this point has, presumably, revolved
around one thing; an awareness of her own need to submit to her husband. The ideas that
come to life within her mind throughout the story have essentially always been there, but
unlike her conscious thoughts, they were kept hidden from her until she was ready to face
them in her pre-conscious mind.
Throughout the story, Mrs. Mallard fights off her pre-conscious thoughts
associated with her husband’s death, most likely because she is aware of how
inappropriate they are. When the freedom comes to her, she can’t even recognize what it
is. “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was
it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name.” Though this freedom is
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something she so clearly longs for, the longing alone is so deep within her pre-conscious
mind that she can’t even name it. In the next paragraph she is described as “striving to
beat it back with her will.” The ambiguity of this line lies in the idea of her
simultaneously beating back her pre-conscious mind, unwilling to accept it. The fact that
she so badly wishes to remain in the dark about her newfound freedom and instead
continue to live life the way she had been before her husband’s death shows that, until
this point in her life, she had never been consciously aware of her own unhappiness.
Once Louise fails against the forces of the freedom which now “possesses” her, it
is as if she becomes a whole new person. No more is the Louise Mallard who requires
great care, or weeps into her sister’s arms. This change in thought from pre-conscious to
conscious creates a switch within Louise’s mind and in the mood of the story as a whole.
She accepts the freedom that had been terrifying to her not moments ago like a long lost
friend. It is only through the scope of Psychoanalytic Theory that this particular analysis
of “The Story of an Hour” can be made.
