Kate Chopin's short story "The Story of an Hour" follows Mrs. Mallard as she processes the news of her husband's death. She moves quickly from grief to a sense of newfound freedom from her restrictive marriage. However, her joy turns to despair when she learns her husband is actually still alive. The story examines 19th century gender roles and how women were expected to be subservient to their husbands. It uses symbolism like an open window to represent Mrs. Mallard finding an opportunity for independence that ultimately leads to her own death from heart trouble.

1. Viorica Condrat
THE STORY OF AN HOUR
SHORT STORY ANALYSIS
Kate Chopin’s ‘The Story of an Hour’ is a short yet complex piece describing the feelings of Mrs. Mallard. The story is overflowing with symbolism and imagery. The most prominent theme here is the longing for freedom. Kate Chopin focuses on unfolding the emotional state of Mrs. Mallard which can be separated into three stages: quickly moving to grief, through a sense of newfound freedom, and finally into despair of loss of that freedom.
‘The Story of an Hour’ was written in the nineteenth century and during this time highly restrictive gender roles forbade women to live as they saw fit. The story seems to focus on the liberation from this social oppression rather than that from a tyrant domineering husband. Thus, it is the social convention that the character wants to escape not her husband who ‘had never looked save with love upon her’. Unfortunately, her husband is part of this convention. The 19th century context highly disregarded a divorced woman and here the roots of Mrs. Mallard’s ‘monstrous joy’ over her husband’s death are to be found. This oxymoron reflects like no other the abnormal situation when a woman is forced to delight in her husband’s death (whom ‘she had loved – sometimes’). On the one hand, the finally gained freedom brings joy, but on the other, it’s horrible to get it in such circumstances.
Kate Chopin masterfully constructs the climax of the story. She builds it gradually making the reader savour each step in the main character’s liberation so that, at the end, the hyperbolized idealization of freedom is smashed together with the appearance of the deceased husband. It is a surprise ending, a very ironic one, to my mind. One cannot help perceiving the author’s bitter irony while producing the phrase: ‘the joy that kills’. In a way, it is an allusion to the previous usage of the word ‘joy’ which is meant to reinforce the idea of abnormality of the situation (i.e. a wife rejoicing over her husband’s death because there is no other possibility for her to feel free in life).
The beginning and the end of the story are linked by the author’s insistence on her character’s ‘heart trouble’. The doctors found its cause in the unbearable delight of seeing her husband safe and sound whereas its true source lay in the main character’s perception of marriage as a life imprisonment. Kate Chopin does not insist upon Mrs. Mallard physical appearance. Very scarce details are given, however the idea of the existing oppression is particularly expressed in: ‘[her face whose] lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength’.
From the third paragraph, the reader clearly sees that Mrs. Mallard is different: ‘she did not hear the story as many women have heard the same’. Even in her grief there is this presence of rebellion, of non-conformity to the established norms which I think is highlighted by the epithet ‘wild’ before the noun ‘abandonment’.
The realization of the next stage in the character’s short life is rendered by extremely symbolic images, images that emphasize the somehow overstated idea of freedom. The first one is to be found in the image of an ‘open window’. A new magical door opens in front of the character, a door leading to the pleasure of living ‘for herself’ and nobody else. Then, the image of ‘the top of the trees’ denoting that finally Mrs. Mallard has dared to aspire for more than bend under somebody else’s ‘powerful will’. The episodic description of a peddler advertising ‘his wares’

2. reflects the woman’s longing for freedom which is finally rendered by the ‘twittering’ of the sparrows.
The image of the birds is highly significant when we speak about their wings which can take the heroine into the immensity of the ‘blue sky’ which was overshadowed by the presence of some ‘clouds’ until that moment.
I am inclined to think that there is a case of intertextuality in this short story. The author points that it is in the ‘west’ that the patches of blue sky appeared. It may be an allusion to P. B. Shelley’s ‘Ode to the West Wind’ where the main theme is freedom too.
Kate Chopin skilfully creates the suspense in the story. At a certain point it is the main character’s internal monologue that is revealed to us. Thus, the detachment in: ‘There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully’ marks the beginning of a self- revelation where the reader together with the character discovers all the sophistry of her situation. The reader becomes keenly aware of Mrs. Mallard’s extreme happiness while she exclaims: ‘Free! Body and soul free!’
However, one cannot help feeling the main character’s overreaction. Thus, the cliché ‘drinking in a very elixir of life’ reflects this idea. And again, Kate Chopin brings forth the image of the open window as a gateway to complete freedom and self-revelation.
The simile in the sentence ‘There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory’ has a tinge of grotesque in it, to my mind. Nevertheless, the situation is saved by the epithet ‘unwittingly’, which reveals the main character’s untamed nature which finally got out of control.
The author does not dwell upon her character’s death. It is in the final line that the reader realizes that Mrs. Mallard wasn’t able to live with the thought of losing the so sought freedom.
‘When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease – of joy that kills’. Here the break in the narrative stands for the protagonist’s tragic ending.
The Story of an Hour is in fact the story of an entire life felt and savoured intensely by the main character within a single, final hour of her short life. It is amazing to see how a person comes to taste and delight in all the pleasures and perversities of one’s unconscious world which is always looking for a way to get free. Definitely, what was regarded as a perversity in the 19th century (e.g. the acute feeling of repression a woman felt in marriage and her hidden desire to get rid of it) is not one anymore. Yet, this story is very significant nowadays due to its implicature. The question that arises after reading the story is: ‘Would the widowed Mrs. Mallard truly have been happy if her husband had died?’ Maybe, the main character was a typical representative of bovarism, which implies that she couldn’t have been happy as she aspired to impossible things.