The Story Of An Hour

3 Pages 721 Words

“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin gives us a very interesting look at how an hour can be such a long time. This story is filled with irony. Every time that you think that you have the plot figured out, Chopin tosses in another twist that throws our minds for a loop. As I read this story the first time I thought how strange, but as I read it again and again I started pick up bits and pieces of what the author was trying to convey.
When I first began reading the story I believed Mrs. Mallard to be an older woman. I thought this because we are told that she is afflicted with a heart trouble. I realize that having heart trouble does not ultimately mean old, but that is just the way our minds work. I was surprised to find that Mrs. Mallard was actually a young woman, described as having “a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression.” She was young in age, but did she feel old? Did she feel that her life meant nothing? We find out the answers to these questions as we read on.
Mrs. Mallard is given the news of her husbands’ death from her sister, Josephine. She reacts just as anyone else would, she weeps immediately, and is stricken with grief. She falls into her sister’s arms for comfort. Then as she composes herself, she goes to her room alone. It is at this point that the story takes a strange twist. Mrs. Mallard sees the blue sky out her window. She feels the breeze flowing in from the outside. She smells the rain that was still in the air. We are told that she feels something coming towards her. She waits fearfully. It is “too subtle and elusive to name.” What could it be wonders the reader? Then it hits us unexpectedly. The thing coming towards her is her freedom. She whispers free, free, free. She is described as having a monstrous joy. Her husband would no longer repress her. She was free at last. She prayed that her life would be long, something that she had not wished for sinc...