Story Of An Hour Literary Analysis Essay

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Kristen Beam Eng 111 I06 Rhonda Limoges December 7, 2014 Literary Analysis: The Story of an Hour The Story of an Hour, by Kate Chopin, is about woman who struggles with oppression brought on by her husband and her secret desire for freedom. Mrs. Mallard doesn’t know how truly unhappy she is until she is told that he has died in an accident. The story is in a third-person point of view, but there is plenty of drama in this short story because of the structure and style of Chopin’s writing. In this story her theme of oppression is revealed by irony, in which she discovers a sense of freedom instead of grief quickly after her husband’s death. The structure and style that Chopin uses is using very short paragraphs to tell the story, it is supposed…show more content…
She is a bright, independent woman, who we find out is also young, “She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength”(Paragraph 7). We are told in the beginning of the story that, “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance”(Paragraph 3). This leads me to believe she was not the same as other women in that era, even though she acted the way a women should, she always deep down wanted more, she wanted to be free to live life the way she wanted to and not the way her husband wanted. Her self-worth was not entangled in her marriage, but rather in the women she wanted to be, "Free! Body and soul free!"(Paragraph 13). She was not a cruel person, she knows “she will weep again”(Paragraph 10) at her husband’s funeral. Mrs. Mallard plays the role of the protagonist in this story. She is stuck in an unfulfilling marriage and she is yearning to be free of it all. Mrs. Mallard has many traits of a heroine of this era. Her reaction to her husband’s death makes her different from other women in her position. Instead of becoming frightened by being alone without the support of her husband, she embraces her new life with open arms. Although Mr. Mallard doesn’t seem to be a bad guy, he is the antagonist in the story. He is the character that keeps Mrs. Mallard from living the life she dreamed about. It is the very presence of Mr. Mallard that ends up killing his Mrs. Mallard. We can only assume that it was the thought of having to live the life she once had to bare, was the real cause of her death. Not the “joy that kills”(Paragraph
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