"The Story of An Hour" by Kate Chopin

Ph Vivian

July 2017

The nineteenth century American literary circle witnessed the emergence of Kate Chopin whose fiction was closely connected with the South. The enthralling image of women in her fiction was contemporarily considered emancipated and passionate. Mrs. Mallard – the protagonist of the brief fiction ‘The story of an hour’ – was one of the typical illustrations of self-assertive female characters in Chopin’s works.

Death hovers over the story from the beginning when Mr. Mallard’s death was informed. Unlike others, Mrs. Mallard immediately understood what had happened and instantaneously started grieving for her husband: “She wept at once with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.” At the time of willingly confining herself in order to achieve the physical and mental states she desired, at the moment of being physically exhausted, the scenery through the room’s window threw into her eyes the open square before her house, the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life, the delicious breath of rain in the air, the wares of a peddler on the street, the singing from countless sparrows. Life went on outside and the world did not stopped. Kate Chopin not only saw and understood all aspects of the female psyche, but she herself was a self-assertive writer of her time. She was interested in writing about women’s awakening of their true nature. “She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will – as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been”. Mrs. Mallard could not be free from the thinking of freedom. A little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips: “free, free, free! Body and soul free”. Now that she can be free and plan her own future life thanks to the new found victorious freedom. “There would be no powerful will bending hers”. We understand that Mrs. Mallard has lived under the shadow of her husband for such a long time that she now desired to live for herself and wished to escape from any private will from a fellow-creature imposed upon her life. The climax of the story was raised to its peak when she suddenly realized that “a kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.” In the name of love, people could take any actions in order to impose their will and viewpoints upon their inferiors who were most of the time women in the society. Even though she knew that her husband loved her, any kind intentions were brutal due to their restriction of her true nature.

The very subtle detail from the story that should be considered was Louise – Mrs. Mallard real name was called for the first time in the seventeenth paragraph. At the moment she thought she could find herself deep inside identity. “Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own”. Mr. Mallard’s return was a lethal fact that resulted in her death. Mrs. Mallard’s fatal heart attack was not owning to her overwhelming joy of her husband’s homecoming as doctor’s claim. It is, however, ironically due to the fact that it was the ending of her new found happiness of independence.

It is true that Kate Chopin herself was a self-assertive writer when expressing her interest in writing about women’s spiritual self-assertion of her time.