Story Of An Hour Literary Analysis

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In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour,” the main character, Mrs. Louise Mallard, experiences a short exhilaration of freedom from the “death” of her husband only to be overwhelmed with disappointment and coincidentally her own death. After her husband, Brently’s, “death” Mrs. Mallard realizes that she was never really living the life she wanted. In this short story, Kate Chopin portrays life in a patriarchal society. Although Mrs. Mallard recognizes the injustice of the power her husband has over her, she cannot take any action because of the way that society has convinced her to act with fear. This story comes to show that many things can happen in only an hour. Normally, death would bring sorrow, grief, and solitude but Kate Chopin shows…show more content…
The story says, “There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds” (paragraph 6). This is an example of the transition because the blue sky is something beautiful to look at but when she looks at it there are clouds covering part of it. This represents how Mrs. Mallard is feeling because she feels something good coming but shecant figure out what it is, her feelings are hiding behind the clouds. Outside her house there was new spring life, “The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song, which some one was singing, reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves” (paragraph 5). These images symbolize that there is something great about to happen and that Mrs. Mallard doesn’t have to be trapped, she could be free. The sound of the birds chirping can be seen as a symbol of hope. Kate Chopin also presents us with an irony. This irony takes place when Mrs. Mallard descends the stairs like a “goddess of victory.” She finally thinks that the woman who has been dormant in her comes out and shows its true colors but that is short lived because once the door opens she is broken to pieces. She has just dealt with too much, hearing about the loss of her husband and then feeling great only to find out that the happiness was all a lie because what had entrapped her had never died in the tragic train accident. It is also ironic because the narrator tells us that Mrs. Mallard “died of heart disease—of the joy that kills” (paragraph 21). This is not true because she was not happy about Brently coming back. Now that she had felt what it would be like to live without her husband, she did not even want to think of going back to her old life. She felt like a new person. When Mrs. Mallard sees that her husband still lives, she

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