Julia Bendata, 51 f.

The Story of An Hour by Kate Chopin

The story under analysis is The Story of An Hour. This short story is
written by a famous American author Kate Chopin who is now considered by some
to have been a forerunner of the feminist authors of the 20th century.
The author describes the series of emotions Louise Mallard endures after
hearing of the death of her husband, who was believed to have died in a railroad
disaster. Mrs. Mallard suffers from heart problems; therefore, her sister attempts to
inform her of the horrific news in a gentle way. Mrs. Mallard locks herself in her
room to immediately mourn the loss of her husband. However, she begins to feel
an unexpected sense of exhilaration. The woman believes that his death is a
benefit, until she discovers that her husband is alive. The shock of seeing her living
husband proves too much for her heart and kills her.
The story is set in the home of Louise Mallard. There are such spatial
markers as her house, her room. Besides, the open window in Louises room
plays the role of an important implying detail because it forms a kind of border
between Louises past unhappy life and future happy life. Furthermore, there is the
opposition of spaces: the open window is the open space, which symbolizes
absolute freedom and the closed room is the limited space, which signifies
repression.
The title of the story refers to the time elapsed between the moments at
which Louise Mallard hears that her husband is dead and discovers that he is alive
after all. The time is not mentioned directly, but the season (spring) and the period
between the morning and the noun can be guessed through such implying details as
spring life, countless sparrows twittering in the eaves, blue sky.
The story is told in the third person from the viewpoint of an omniscient
anonymous narrator. As a result, the reported speech combined with the authors
narrative: And yet she had loved him sometimes. Often she had not. What did it
matter? What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for? . The direct speech

is presented by the monologue: Free! Body and soul free! and the dialogue of
characters:
Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door you will make yourself
ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heavens sake open the door.
Go away. I am not making myself ill.
The author employs specific structural and stylistic techniques to heighten
the drama of the hour. The Story of An Hour belongs to the belles-lettres
functional style, the main aim of which is to give the readers aesthetic pleasure, to
make them think and to entertain them by appealing to their emotions. The story is
short, made up of a series of short paragraphs, many of which consist of just two or
three sentences.
The exposition begins with the fact that Mrs. Mallard has a weak heart that
changes the way everybody has to behave to her. Mrs. Mallards friends have to
break the news to her gently. The rising action starts when Mrs. Mallard reacts in a
totally unusual way to her husbands death. Instead of refusing to believe the news
or take it in, she instantly grasps it and cries her eyes out, before going off to be
alone: She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, the storm of grief, the
dull stare, the vacant stare and the look of terror. The realization of being now
absolutely free results in a strange, contradictory sensation rendered by the author
by means of the oxymoron monstrous joy. Finally, Mrs. Mallard succumbs to
that realization that she is free that shows the peak of her emotions and the climax
of the story. The epiphoric repetition combined with parallelism of life might be
long in the sentence: She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was
only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long emphasizes
the contrast between her previous colourless life and her would-be life of freedom
and self-assertion. The falling action, when Mrs. Mallard walks in, far from dead,
shocking everyone, is rendered by means of a simile: She carried herself like a
goddess of Victory and metaphor: She was drinking in a very elixir of life. The
denouement of the story is an unexpected return of Mr. Mallard and also an
unexpected death of Mrs. Mallard because of shock, grief and frustration of hopes.

The most recurrent words of the story are free and life (live), each repeated
five times. They are also the key words, whats why the idea of freedom and love
of life permeates this story.