Essay On Mrs. Mallard In Kate Chopin's Story Of An Hour

520 Words3 Pages
Mrs. Mallard is a woman ,who has just received the news that her husband has been killed in a railroad disaster. She is overwhelmed with grief when she learns the news. In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” Mrs. Mallard sister, Josephine, is given the duty of telling Mrs. Mallard of her husband’s death. Most women would have been saddened by the passing of their spouse, but Mrs. Mallard saw the experience as an opportunity of liberation of marriage. Mrs. Mallard “did not hear the story as many women have heard the same...she wept at once, with sudden wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms” (Chopin 476). Most women, when hearing of their husband’s sudden death, don’t begin to process that information immediately because they are in disbelief or shock. However, Mrs. Mallard began to weep and sob uncontrollably as soon as she learns of her husband’s tragic death. This is the first clue to the reader that she may not be upset as she seems. Shortly…show more content…
Then she begins to sob again “ as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams” (476). As she continues to sit there, she begins to think, and her mind starts to change. At first she is thinking about the lost of her husband and the reality of losing him and being by herself. Then she begins to realize that she can have a life of freedom without him. Even though she began to picture a life without marriage and the opportunity to do what she wanted, she still was saddened by his death because “ She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that have never looked save with love upon her, fixed and grey and dead.”(477). But even then her sadness was short lived because immediately after “ she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she spread her arms out to them in welcome ”
Open Document