...Stephens 1 John Stephens Professor Freeland Eng 101 7 January 2009 An Analysis of “The Story of an Hour” Written in 1894, “The Story of an Hour” is a story of a woman who, through the erroneously reported death of her husband, experienced true freedom and happiness. Both tragic and ironic, the story deals with the boundaries imposed on women by society in the nineteenth century. The author Kate Chopin, like the character in her story, had first-hand experience with the male-dominated society of that time and had experienced the death of her husband at a young age. The similarity between Kate Chopin and her heroine can only leave us to wonder how much of this story is fiction and how much is personal experience. Indeed, Louise Mallard and Kate Chopin’s lives are very similar. Louise’s life began once she came to the realization that she could live for herself. During this “hour” she felt true joy and freedom, but her life ended abruptly as her husband walked through the door. Like Mrs. Mallard, Chopin’s writing career began once her husband died. She wrote a few collections of short stories, but when she began expressing her feminist views, the critics walked through the door and her life as a writer was over. The background of the story gives us the idea of what Mrs. Mallard’s marriage meant to her. We see a picture of a young well-to-do wife who seems to be very pleased with her life. We also get the Stephens 2 impression that she was...
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...Readings in British and American Literature HanQiqun June,08,2015 Irony Analysis of the story of an hour Guerin concludes that the formalistic critic deals with irony and paradox，with symbols and with the tensions that result from multiple interactions within the organic form of the literary piece.( Guerin 118) "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin is a short story that there is a "deeper level of irony in the story" in it. The short story expresses what happened to Louise Mallard after hearing of her husband Brently’s death in a railroad disaster. Since Mrs. Mallard suffers has heart problems, her sister Josephine told her the horrific news in a gentle way. After crying for a while, she went to her room alone and locked herself there. She should have been mournful and hopeless because of her husband’s death. However, she felt somewhat excited and frenzy. "Free! Body and soul free!" is what she really got from his death. After she accepted her husband’s death and realized she was free then, her husband came back safely. Finally she died. Although she died from the shock of seeing her living husband, the doctor said she was killed by joy. Though Chopin sympathizes the heroine, she puts bitter irony on her, meanwhile her attitude to the independent freedom is contradictory.(周亚萍 221）From the above introduction some perfect examples of irony use can be easily found. Here are the analysis of two of them. One is that Josephine was worried that Mrs. Mallard...
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...I'm comparing and contrasting the two stories: The Story of an Hour, and The Interlopers. The two stories have more in common that contrast. For example: both characters explain their feelings in their own personal way. Mrs. Mallard has trouble with heart decease, and her husband dies in a war. She gets broken the news and feels freedom. He was a good man, but she feels she can be her complete self again. Ulrich, on the other hand, hates his neighbor Georg. They have been at it ever since they were young. Ulrich is trying to make a living for his family and Georg is a rich brat, that thinks he can do what he wants to Ulrich's land. Through the stories, they talk about the weather. My guess is that it's the end of fall going...
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...Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" is a story about a woman, named Mrs. Mallard, who had a weak heart. Her sister, Josephine and her husband's friend Richards break the sad news of her husband's supposed death in a train crash very carefully, so as not to upset her. After hearing the news, Mrs. Mallard acts very unconventionally. First, she cries for a second and then sadly goes up to her room, alone. Then, she begins to plan the rest of her life, without her better-half and a feeling of happiness begins to overwhelm her, now that her husband is gone. Mrs. Mallard's "job" in the society she lived in, was to care solely for her husband and now she was free. She could live her own life. "Free! Body and soul free" (Chopin)! It is then, that...
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...“Story of an Hour,” a short fiction about a married woman named Louise Mallard, who received disturbing news about her spouse dying in a train accident. Louise’s sister Josephine was very hesitant about informing her about the tragic situation that has occurred. She was more afraid to tell Louise because of her heart condition. Therefore, Josephine tries to break the news to her gently about the death of her husband. Louise mallard immediately “wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment” (Chopin, 128). She went to her bedroom where she stood worried by an open window, symbolically meaning that things are about to open up to her. She starts to say “Free, Free, Free” (Chopin, 129) under her breath as if she will now live for herself and not for him. Mrs. Mallard’s family friend and sister were skeptical about delivering this tragic news to her due to her heart condition. Once telling her the news she then returned downstairs where she experiences another shock and disappointment that her husband is not dead. He walked steadily through the front door; ironically, she falls to the floor dead herself. “She had died of heart disease of joy that kills” (Chopin, 129). The author Kate Chopin is trying to show how Mrs. Mallard was...
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...Story of an Hour: The need to be free “Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin is about Mrs. Louise Mallard, a woman with heart troubles, her husband Brently Mallard who had her under his bondage, Mrs. Mallard sister Josephine who cared very much about her and treated her gently and Mr. Mallard’s friend Richard who was the bearer of the news of Mr. Mallard’s death. When Mrs. Mallard got the news of her husband’s death, she was heartbroken at first and she wept. After some time alone in her room with the many thoughts that flooded her, Mrs. Mallard finally realized that she was living in captivity and now she was finally free. On her way to the door she saw her husband who is supposed to be dead, alive at the bottom of the stares and her heart gave way, her sudden need for freedom was...
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...How were women’s lives affected by society's expectations regarding the male dominance formality? For many years, women have been minimized and marked as always being inferior to a man. Society has played a major role in this stereotype that women struggled with in the past. Fortunately, this stereotype is not around as much as it used to be. Delia Jones from ”Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston and Mrs. Mallard from “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin both struggle with the female roles that society has put upon them and long for individual freedom, even though their relationships with their spouses differed. For many years, women had to be married and care for the household duties in order to be considered successful. Delia and Mrs. Mallard...
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...At the point when Chopin was composing, the women's activist development had scarcely started, and in Louisiana, ladies were still thought to be their spouses' legitimate property. (Toth, 1999). Accordingly, Chopin's baldfaced, arousing, free heroes were years relatively revolutionary. "The Story of a Hour" reflects Chopin's point of view of the onerous section that marriage played in women's lives as the legend, Louise Mallard, feels enormous open door exactly when her mate has passed on. While he is alive, she must live for him, and exactly when he passes on does her life at the end of the day transform into her own. The entire topic of this artful culmination develops around opportunity, and how the primary character escapes pain and demise and depicts it into another open door that is called " Freedom". Recapulating the story, she has heart burden, so she must be taught unequivocally...
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...In the short story “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, the author uses Irony to showcase a freedom that was almost at the tips of the main character Mrs. Mallard’s fingertips, yet the short-lived glimpses of independence diminish within a short period of time. We understand that the pleasures she is feeling after she hears that her husband is dead is quite opposite to what most women would feel in this day in age. A perfect example of how the author etched in some irony into the story. However, this scene in the helps us understand just how oppressed women were in this era. A woman's status was determined by her husband, his success ultimately became her success. Any dream that girls had were ultimately squashed by her husbands career and...
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...The Story of an Hour, The Chrysanthemums, The Storm, Little Things, The Flea, and Desiree’s Baby are all works that revolve around relationships between men and women. However, even though all of these works revolve around relationships, there are many similarities and differences among them. To start things off, one similarity shared by all of the works are the false relationships between couples. Another similarity between the works are the use of things within them being used as inexplicable symbols. Also, all of the works except The Storm show women being mistreated and not appreciated by men. Now following behind those similarities of those works are differences, such as The Storm being the only one of the works which has the man caring...
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...Literary Analysis of The Story of an Hour Oppression is dominant in many traditional styled marriages, suggesting that the woman stay at home to see to the man’s needs and to bore children, only to later end up old and sad and without independence, seeking resolution and finding only anguish and regret in her endeavors. Death in many cultures is looked upon as a sad event, and in others is respectively as a joyous moment, not because the victim was deceased, but because they are thought to have moved on to a new life. What these two concepts have in common may be vague at first glance, but after reading The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin, one can begin to piece together the relationship between these two concepts. The title ultimately has the ability to tell the story before one even has to lay eyes on the first sentence. The Story of an Hour suggests that the woman’s life begin at the very moment that her husband's ended, in other words, this is where her story began. The title goes on to suggest that her new life only lasted for one short hour until she abruptly perished. No other detailed information about how her life was previous to this...
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...Joy That Kills Do you know how you will react upon hearing the ever so grave news that someone close to you has perished? Imagine, if only but for a moment, the range, intensity, and volume of emotions that will be flowing through your consciousness. In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, we see this scenario played out in a woman’s life during one emotion-filled hour. Louise Mallard is a woman afflicted with heart problems who, upon hearing the unfortunate news of her husband’s death, is thrust into a moment in time when the life she has come to know suddenly begins to take on a whole new meaning. Interwoven in this timeless tale are themes of self-assertion, oppression, repression, and freedom at a time when woman were anything but. Through her use of irony, symbolism, suspense, and descriptive narratives, Chopin masterfully captures the essence of one woman’s plight in “The Story of an Hour”. The use of irony is an effective literary tool Chopin uses throughout her story to keep the audience cognitive of the contradictions inherent in people and situations. Early on, we see an example of situational irony when we are told Louise Mallard, after being informed of her husband’s death, “Did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzing inability to accept its significance” (215). We are further told, “She wept at once, with wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms” (215). Louise appeared to everyone in the house to be extremely sad and goes...
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...While reading Kate Chopin "Story Of An Hour", she gives off a very unique message to everyone that reads it. The story follows a woman named Mrs. Mallard and her 1 hour of freedom that she had after she thinks her husband in dead. In Kate Chopin's "The Story Of An Hour", Chopin portrays situational irony along with an exciting tone to express how little women are understood when it comes to marriage and stereotypes. Chopin's uses a celebratory tone in parts of the story expresses how freeing women felt when finally able to be themselves again after a marriage that was tying them down is broken off. When Mrs. Mallard finally realizes that her husband is "gone for good", Chopin writes,"What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being! 'Free! Body and soul free!' She kept whispering" (101). The...
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...Hannah Radney Professor Andrew J. DiNicola English 1102 July 22, 2014 Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”: Character Analysis of Louise Mallard Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” (1894) is a fictional short story presumably set in America in the late 19th century. Chopin’s story is a description of an hour in the life of Louise Mallard, the protagonist in the story. The subject of the story is the transformation of Louise Mallard after she learns about the supposed death of her husband, Brently Mallard; what she thinks and how she feels as she is alone and contemplates self-assertion for the first time. (Koloski) Chopin first introduces the reader to the main character as only Mrs. Mallard. Given the time period of the story, Chopin directs the reader to the conclusion that Mrs. Mallard has no identity of her own. This reference to her as only by her husband’s last name foreshadows how marriage represses Mrs. Mallard and realistically like many women of this time in history. The virtuous wife, in Mrs. Mallard’s world, accepts the idea that her husband has a right to impose a private will upon her. (Jamil) During the time period in which the story takes place, married women are in a subservient role to their husbands under the “femme covert laws.” “Covert refers to a woman’s legal status after marriage: legally upon marriage, the husband and wife were treated as one entity. In essence, the wife’s separate legal existence disappeared as far as property.” (Lewis 1) A married...
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...Analysis of “The Story of an Hour” written by Kate Chopin The story under analysis is written by Kate Chopin. Kate Chopin was an American author of short stories and novels. She wrote for both children and adults. She is considered as a forerunner of feminist author. Unlike many of the feminist writers of her time who were mainly interested in improving the social conditions of women, she looked for an understanding of personal freedom. She put much concentration on women’s lives and their continual struggles to create an identity of their own personality. Her stories were not accepted by the public of that period. Through her stories Kate wrote her own autobiography and documented her surroundings. She is the author of such works as “The Awakening”, “A Night in Arcadie”, “Désirée’s Baby”, “At Fault” and “The story of an Hour”. The action of the “The story of an Hour” takes place in the house of Mr. and Mrs. Mallard, in the middle of 19 century. In a bourgeois family. I’d like to remark that at that time the situation was different from the current state of things in modern world. Women were supposed to obey their husbands, devoting themselves fully to raising a baby and taking care of their house. No time for their personal needs, hobbies, interests and work. Women lived all their lives in the shadow of their husbands. “The story of an Hour” begins with sad news. Mrs. Mallard’s sister Josephine and her husband’s friend Richards try to inform her husband’s death. During the...
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