A Close Reading of Edith L.

Tiempo's "Bonsai" Bonsai All that I love I fold over once And once again And keep in a box Or a slit in a hollow post Or in my shoe. All that I love? Why, yes, but for the moment --And for all time, both. Something that folds and keeps easy, Sons note or Dads one gaudy tie, A roto picture of a young queen, A blue Indian shawl, even A money bill. Its utter sublimation A feat, this hearts control Moment to moment To scale all love down To a cupped hands size, Till seashells are broken pieces From Gods own bright teeth. And life and love are real Things you can run and

Breathless hand over To the merest child. - Edith L. Tiempo ***

A first reading of Edith L. Tiempos signature poem is a tad confounding, for the first lady of Philippine poetry in English deploys the centripetal-centrifugal-centripetal (or inward-outward-inward) motion in expressing her profoundest thoughts and deepest feelings about love. The title itself, Bonsai, is a bit misleading, since nowhere else in the poem are there any further references to plant life or the ancient Japanese technique of cultivating miniature trees or shrubs through dwarfing by selective pruning. Some might even argue that Origami is the better title choice, for at least the personas act of folding objects is a bit analogous to the Japanese art of paper folding to make complicated shapes. But this reader will prove at the end of this essay that Bonsai is the most appropriate title for the poem, something that is no t quite obvious to most people after their perfunctory appraisal of this often misread literary masterpiece. However, despite the false lead, even a cursory perusal of the poem reveals to the sensitive and sensible reader that Bonsai is about love, if only because the four-letter word is mentioned in all four stanzas. In the first stanza, the persona declares that she folds everything that she loves and keeps them hidden in secret places: a box,/ Or a slit in a hollow post,/ Or in my shoe.// What then are the things she considers imperative enough to keep?

At first glance, the catalogue of her beloved objects in the second stanza appears to be disparate, unrelated, almost random, if not completely aleatory. But since a literary sorceress like Tiempo seldom commits mistakes in conjuring appropriate images, then there must a be reason for singling out these particular items and not others. The more important query therefore is this: What do Sons note or Dads one gaudy tie,/ A roto[i] picture of a young queen,/ A blue Indian shawl, even/ A money bill.// share in common? Besides being foldable and thus easy to keep, they must symbolize for the loving female persona important individuals and incidents in her life. For as the semiotician Roland Barthes correctly observes in A Lovers Discourse: Every object touched by the loved beings body becomes part of that body, and the subject eagerly attaches himself to it.[ii]

If we are to assume that the speaking voice of Bonsai closely resembles the poets own, then the first three objects must represent members of her immediate family: son Maldon; husband Edilberto (It is a well-known fact among writing fellows and panelists of the Silliman Writers Workshop that Edith fondly called the late fictionist and literary critic Dad, while being addressed by her husband as Mom, which is a common practice among Filipino couples.); and daughter Rowena (Unknown to many, the current Program Administrator of the Iowa Writers Workshop is a former winner of the Miss Negros Oriental beauty contest sometime in the 1970s, another indicator of the Filipino flavor of the poem, since the Philippines is a pageant-obsessed Third World country.). The referents of the last two items are more covert and thereby more difficult to decipher. At best, we can only speculate on the persons and/or events that make the two things significant: blue Indian shawl (Ediths engagement date with Edilberto, her first winter in Iowa, her last autumn in Denver?); money bill (Her initial salary from Silliman University, cash prize from the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for

Literature?). In the long run though the indeterminacy of the allusions does not really matter, for the opaqueness of the symbols leads not to generic obscurity and obfuscation, but to personal mythology and mystery. Perhaps part of the poems message is that the things a person considers memorable and therefore valuable most other people might think of as debris, detritus or dirt. (Note that the adverb even modifying money bill is used to indicate something unexpected or unusual, which in the context of the poem seems to suggest that a money bill is not a conventional object to collect and treasure even by the most sentimental of persons.) Suffice it to say that all five objects, which are outwardly ordinary and nondescript, acquire associative significations because they serve for the poetic persona as conduits of recall, like mementoes, souvenirs and keepsakes. Interestingly, the second stanza commences with what appears to be a rhetorical question (All that I love?), which the persona answers with a paradox: Why, yes, but for the moment ---/ And for all time, both. The significance of these seemingly selfcontradictory lines will be discussed towards the end of this essay, but for now this reader will focus on the fact that the persona pauses to contemplate on the germane issue of the scope of her love, before she proceeds to enumerate her loved ones memorabilia that she has decided to vouchsafe. Love for the female persona therefore is a conscious choice, a cognitive act not only an affective one, a motif that recurs in various degrees in most of her other love poems.

In the third stanza, the persona explains the rationale behind her action:

Its utter sublimation A feat, this hearts control Moment to moment To scale all love down To a cupped hands size,

The keyword here is sublimation, which in psychology is the deflection of sexual energy or other atavistic biological impulse from its immediate goal to one of a higher social, moral or aesthetic nature or use. In chemistry, on the other hand, sublimation is the process of transforming a solid substance by heat into a vapor, which on cooling condenses again to solid form without apparent liquefaction. Inherent in both definitions is the act of refinement and purification through fire, since to sublimate in a sense is to make something sublime out of something sordid. In the latter a literal fire dissolves through a crucible the dross from the precious metal, while in the former it is furnace of the mind that burns away the superfluous from the crucial experiences. The second most important idea in this stanza is the procedure of scaling love down, which Tiempo asserts is a feat by itself, an exceptional accomplishment of the female personas sentimental heart which is achieved through utmost discipline and restraint. But aside from mere manageability, why is it necessary to miniaturize love, to whittle it down to the size of a cupped hand?

The answer to this pertinent question is given, albeit in a tangential fashion, in the fourth and last stanza: And life and love are real/ Things you can run and/ Breathless hand over/ To the merest child. Love as real things or concrete objects rather than as abstract concepts is easier to pass on, since it has become more tangible and thus more comprehensible to most everyone else, including children and ones beloved offspring. It also underscores the importance of bequeathing the legacy of love to the next generation, since as the clich goes children are the future of the world, which makes the merest child, and not the wisest woman nor the strongest man, the ideal recipient of such a wonderful gift. The image of the cupped hand also emphasizes the idea that in the act of giving the one offering the bequest is also a beggar of sorts, since the beneficiary can always refuse to accept the heirlooms being proffered. But another important element is introduced in the ultimate stanza, for the persona by some extraordinary leap of the imagination perceives the seashells on the beach as broken pieces/ From Gods own bright teeth, which for a better understanding of Bonsai must be elaborated on, so that readers of Philippine poetry from English can fully appreciate the tight structural organization of the poem. Gmino H. Abad in his remarkable essay Mapping Our Poetic Terrain: Filipino Poetry in English from 1905 to the Present[iii]connects this image to the paradoxical lines of the second stanza for the moment ---/ And for all time, both. This reader cannot help but agree, since indeed the five objects mentioned by the persona being mementoes of the people she loves are metonyms of memory, shattered but shimmering fragments of chronology, captured important moments immortalized in the heart and mind, if we are to visualize Time itself as a manifestation of God.

Of greater consequence, thought, is that this divine figure completes Tiempos poetic picture about love and remembrance by adding the spiritual detail, for love like the unmentionable Hebrew name of the Almighty is also a Tetragrammaton, a four-letter

word, which has probably engendered the often-quoted adage that God is Love, and Love is God. Structurally speaking, her most famous poem can thus be diagrammed in this manner:

TREE/SHRUB ------- bonsai

LOVE ------------- sons note, Dad's one gaudy tie, etc.

GOD -------------- seashells

MAN/WOMAN -------- merest child

On the left side of the chart are the huge objects, concepts or people: full-size flora (Tree/Shrub), big abstract words (Love, God) and grownups (Man/Woman). Their miniature analogues, in contrast, are found on the right side of the chart. However, these diminutive parallels, especially the mementoes, retain the spirit of their larger versions, since the process of sublimation reduces things only in terms of size but not in essence. Ultimately, this makes Bonsai the perfect title of the poem, for a bonsai has all the necessary parts that make a tree or a shrub what it is: roots, a trunk, branches, leaves and flowers, albeit in smaller portions; in the same manner that love even if sublimated by the heart and the mind still preserves its sum and substance, its lifeblood in the truest sense of the written word and the word made flesh.

Notes: [i] Short for rotogravure: a photomechanical process by which pictures, typeset matter, etc., are printed from an intaglio copper cylinder to the pages of a newspaper, usually the magazine section.

[ii] Roland Barthes, A Lovers Discourse: Fragments, Hill and Wong, New York, 1978, p. 173.

[iii] See Gmino H. Abad's introductory essay in The Likhaan Anthology of Philippine Literature in English, University of the Philippines Press, Quezon City, 1998.

An Analysis of Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe

I discussed the poem Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe with my seventh grade classes, and we had lively discussions about it. The conventionaland typicalinterpretation of this poem is that it is a love poem inspired by Poes dead wife. My interpretation is different, however. Ive tried to find another interpretation like mine, and failing, have decided to explain what I think. Firstly, I want to point out that I am not going to write this as a research paper. I will have no sources other than the poem itself and my own thoughts. Additionally, I begin with the knowledge that Poe composed the poem after his wifes death. Any specifics about his or her age, cause of death, etcetera, will not come into this explanation because I do not believe them relevant. One of the most challenging features of Annabel Lee is something that Ive intuited but never felt the need to articulate, namely: A fiction writer is understood to take up the role of a narrator, which may differ from his or her own perspective. A poet, on the other hand, is presumed to simply be revealing his or her own biographical feelings in the poem. In short, a poem like Annabel Lee is doubly challenging because it contains both a fictional narrative and a fictional narrator. Since Annabel Lee is in the public domain, I can begin with the text of the poem itself. Note that Poe actually indents the even lines of his poem, but WordPress enjoys stripping any spaces from the code, and Im not willing to try to spend hours trying to figure out how to force it to add three extra spaces to every other line of this poem. Annabel Lee By Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love

I and my Annabel Lee With a love that the wingd seraphs of Heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in Heaven, Went envying her and me Yes!that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we Of many far wiser than we And neither the angels in Heaven above Nor the demons down under the sea Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darlingmy darlingmy life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea In her tomb by the sounding sea. I want to take an alternate viewpoint of this poem and examine it from the premise that Poe was using an unreliable narrator. From this point on, when I refer to the poet, I will be referring to the fictional

character who is recounting the events of the poem, not Edgar Allan Poe. I will refer to Poe by name when I mean Poe the craftsman who created this poem. If the poet is unreliable, deciphering which pieces of the poem are factual, and which pieces are interpretations based on the poets flawed perspective is a balancing act. The unreliable narrator has a distorted perception of reality, and through that distortion, the reader must interpret what is real and what the poet believes. The poem Annabel Lee gradually reveals stanza by stanza that the poet is not sane. Within each stanza the poet explains more of his distorted reality, allowing the reader to decipher that the madness was present all along. At the poems conclusion, the reader can look back over the poem to see that all of the unreliable hints left by the mad poet.
STANZA ONE

It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, The poet begins the poem with It was many and many a year ago, which is a close approximation of Once upon a time, or even, A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away This prepares the reader for Never Never Land, a comparable fairy tale landscape, or the green, green grass of the past. That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; He describes Annabel Lee as a maiden, which is, by definition, a young girl, especially unmarried, or a virgin. That he does call her a maiden indicates that their relationship had not progressed to marriage, or he would likely have introduced her as his wife. And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. The poet also explains that the maiden, lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me. Since it is the poet who makes this declaration (and not the maiden; we dont discover until Stanza Three why the maiden cant speak for herself), there are two conclusions we can draw from his statement:

The maiden really did live with no other thought that to love and be loved by the poet; The maiden did not have these thoughts, but the poet believed that she did.

Stanza One is the beginning of the poem, and the reader has not had enough exposure to the poet to evaluate his reliability. Readers who assume that the poet is recounting his own true feelings or experiences in the poem will not doubt that the poet is honestly portraying the state of affairs. In contrast, readers who begin to question the reliability of the poet after reading the remainder of the poem must question the accuracy of his assertions.
STANZA TWO

I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love I and my Annabel Lee With a love that the wingd seraphs of Heaven Coveted her and me. The couplets introduce these concepts: 1. The poet and Annabel Lee were children in this once upon a time place; 2. the poet and Annabel Lee loved with a love that was more than love; 3. this love was so amazingly great that the angels in heaven were jealous of the lovers. Most people read that the poet and Annabel Lee loved with a love that was more than love and assume simply that this line is hyperbole, or an exaggeration of the love the two shared. They do not even question the poets assertion, seemingly taking it for granted that a thing (or concept) can be greater than the thing (or concept) itself. But something by definition cannotbe greater than itself. The formula 1 > 1 results in a logical error. Add to this the very abstract and ultimately unknowable statement uttered in lines 11-12, when the poet declares that the angels of heaven are jealous of the love shared between Annabel Lee and the narrator. Such an assertion can be interpreted as either fact or opinion, as in:

The poet has knowledge of the heavens that gives him access to the motivations of divine beings. The poets opinion is that the angels of heaven were jealous of the love shared by the lovers.

Im going to go out on a limb here and point out that my experience in life has left me slightly ignorant of the sublime. Indeed, most people I know (and even the most religious among them) are equally ignorant of the sublime. Therefore, the first point can be discounted. This leaves us with the interpretation that the poet was expressing an opinion when he declared that the angels were jealous. Since people vary in the way they deal with grief, it is not unlikely to assume that the

poet has decided to pin the blame for his loves loss on the divine instruments, Gods angels. What has driven the poet to angels is unclear, especially since he may as well go all the way to the big guy. After all, God is the one who directs the angels much like a toddler with his toy cars. Indeed, by focusing his attention on the angels, hes giving God a pass, and this purposeful omission appears to be the poets way to blame God without blaming God.
STANZA THREE

Within this stanza the poet adds two pieces of information to his tale. First, he reinforces the angels culpability by saying, This is the reason though he doesnt yet acknowledge the angels as divine hitmen: And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; Second, the highborn kinsmen of Annabel Lee take her away and shut her up in a sepulchre by the sea: So that her highborn kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. Probably the most telling element of this stanza is that the poet reveals through his explanation that he is not in any way responsible for Annabel Lees body. Her kinsmen are. This supports his earlier statement of Annabel Lee as a maiden. She is a minor, then, a dependent whose elders take care of her after her death. Keep in mind that his reliability is questionable, so the behavior of others in this case supports the statement that she was a maiden, and we can accept it now more readily.
STANZA FOUR

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven, Went envying her and me Yes!that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

The poets accusation that the angels are divine hitman incapable of accepting such pure love on earth is a restatement of his assertion from Stanza Three; however, in Stanza four he goes further by attempting to legitimize this accusation when he explains that since everyone knows it, it must be so. Ive already explained my doubts about the poets access to sublime knowledge; Im equally suspicious about his access to the knowledge of his fellow men, which means his as all men know argument is equally faulty. I interpret this as self-deception: he has convinced himself that angels killed Annabel Lee and tells himself that all men know this to be the case. We dont have all men to substantiate the poets declaration; instead, we have the poet who is increasingly unreliable. The cause of Annabel Lees death, according to the poet, is that the wind came out of the cloud by night, / Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. What makes this line interesting is that it could be the most truthful line in the entire poem. Annabel Lee could have died from exposure to cold air; she could have developed pneumonia; there are probably many possible methods of dying from exposure. What is telling about the poet is that he then takes this cold air killer and connects it with the divine, identifying it as the will of angels who seek to end Annabels life.
STANZA FIVE

But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we Of many far wiser than we And neither the angels in Heaven above Nor the demons down under the sea Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; The poet reveals his strong love, far stronger than the love experienced by others, which is why it can t be split by either angels or demons. It is a misapprehension of either innocence or madness to assume that what you yourself experience differs from every other person who has ever existed. Its the perennial teenage argument, You just dont understand, when the reality is that it is the teenager who just doesnt understand, who speaks from ignorance and assumes everyone else is not equally ignorant, but more ignorant. One part of aging is to get past the egocentric assumption that the rest of the world cannot connect to your experiences. The poet has never passed to true maturity, since the loss of Annabel Lee has left him emotionally crippled at the same level of emotional maturity as he was when he lost her. After all, the poet introduces the poem with the line, It was many and many a year ago. Meanwhile, he remains (all

these years later) as certain as ever that no one can appreciate his lost love, that no one can understand, because no one has ever experienced such a loss.
STANZA SIX

The final stanza of Annabel Lee is a knock-out. But Poe doesnt just put it in one solid jab; he throws a rapid right-left combo before the main thrust. Observe: For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; We accept this as believable. Certainly a lost love will visit her lovers dreams as he mourns her death. And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; The creep factor should have set in with the words, I feel the bright eyes. I recognize only two possible interpretations for this line:

The poet is reaching out with his own fingertips to feel the bright eyes / Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; or The poet can feel the admittedly dead Annabel Lee looking at him. This is the more likely of the two, since it indicates that the poet feels a connection to the dead Annabel Lee as she observes him despite the gulf between the two.

Heres the final punch: And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darlingmy darlingmy life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea In her tomb by the sounding sea. The poet reveals that he spends his nights within his dead loves tomb at the side of her body. Poe waits, has the poet hold off on this admission until the conclusion of the poem because he wants his reader to look back over the rest of the poem and see it anew, see it in the light of a narrator willing to lay inside a sepulchre beside a dead body near the ocean. All previous stanzas are skewed after the poet admits he sleeps beside Annabel Lee even after her death.

IN CONCLUSION

I believe Poe was really trying to create a disturbing poem that reveals gradually that the poet was unreliable and obsessed with a woman who may not have returned his love. The basic unreliability of the poet revealed in hints throughout the poem means that even as the poet claims Annabel Lee is his bride, a reader may not be able to believe that she was anything more than an obsession. Weve all heard stories of Hollywood starlets beset by obsessive stalkers who need restraining orders; these maniacal lovers fill notebooks with fantasies, and live with the belief that the two are meant to be together for all time. I think Poe wanted to capture this monomania when he wrote Annabel Lee, portraying a creepy stalker willing to sneak into his dead loves crypt because of his certainty that she wants to be with him even in death.

"The Story of An Hour"

Kate Chopin (1894)

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death. It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message. She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. 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. There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul. She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the 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. There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window. She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought. There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air. Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. 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. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under hte breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body. She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome. There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. 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.

And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of selfassertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being! "Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering. Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door." "Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window. 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. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom. Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife. When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.

THE STORY OF AN HOUR

Kate Chopin

Context
Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1850, one of five children but the only one to live through her twenties. Her father, Thomas OFlaherty, died when she was five, and she spent her childhood among women: her mother, Eliza; grandmother; great-grandmother; and the nuns who ran her school. In 1870, Chopin married Oscar Chopin and moved with him to New Orleans, where they had six children. Chopin was an independent spirit who smoked cigarettes, walked alone through the city, and argued passionately with others about politics and social problems, much to the dismay of the other New Orleans housewives in her social circle. Not long after the family moved to Cloutierville, Louisiana, Oscar died unexpectedly. Chopin mourned his death deeply but eventually embraced her independence, even going so far as to having an affair with a married man. Chopin soon returned to St. Louis, where she would spend the rest of her life. Chopin began writing fiction in 1889. She wrote about life and people in Louisiana and focused her attention on love, sex, marriage, women, and independence. She published her first novel, At Fault, in 1890, when she was forty. The novel was well received, and she went on to publish short stories and essays addressing similar topics. She published two collections of short stories, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Arcadie (1897), and became known as a writer with a keen eye for local culture. The Story of an Hour was published in 1894 and, along with The Storm (1898), is among Chopins most famous stories. Although Chopins female protagonists act in unconventional, even scandalous, ways, readers accepted this as simply part of the storytelling and didnt suspect Chopin of moralizing or trying to insert her personal opinions into her work.

In 1899, Chopin published her second novel, The Awakening. The novel, which chronicles a married womans adulterous affair, shocked readers. Chopin had allowed her support of womens independence and sexual freedom to shine through, which proved to be unacceptable. The publication of this novel marked the beginning of the end of Chopins writing career, and the novel soon fell out of print, remaining undiscovered until the 1950s. Today, Chopin is known for addressing feminist issues many years before the feminist movement became a major social and political force in America. When Chopin was writing, the feminist movement had barely begun, and in Louisiana, women were still considered to be their husbands lawful property. As a result, Chopins brazen, sensual, independent protagonists were years ahead of their time. The Story of an Hour reflects Chopins view of the repressive role that marriage played in womens lives as the protagonist, Louise Mallard, feels immense freedom only when her husband has died. While he is alive, she must live for him, and only when he dies does her life once again become her own. Chopin died of a brain hemorrhage in 1904. She was fifty-two.

Plot Overview
Louise Mallard has heart trouble, so she must be informed carefully about her husbands death. Her sister, Josephine, tells her the news. Louises husbands friend, Richards, learned about a railroad disaster when he was in the newspaper office and saw Louises husband, Brently, on the list of those killed. Louise begins sobbing when Josephine tells her of Brentlys death and goes upstairs to be alone in her room. Louise sits down and looks out an open window. She sees trees, smells approaching rain, and hears a peddler yelling out what hes selling. She hears someone singing as well as the sounds of sparrows, and there are fluffy white clouds in the sky. She is young, with lines around her eyes. Still crying, she gazes into the distance. She feels apprehensive and tries to suppress the building emotions within her, but cant. She

begins repeating the word Free! to herself over and over again. Her heart beats quickly, and she feels very warm. Louise knows shell cry again when she sees Brentlys corpse. His hands were tender, and he always looked at her lovingly. But then she imagines the years ahead, which belong only to her now, and spreads her arms out joyfully with anticipation. She will be free, on her own without anyone to oppress her. She thinks that all women and men oppress one another even if they do it out of kindness. Louise knows that she often felt love for Brently but tells herself that none of that matters anymore. She feels ecstatic with her newfound sense of independence. Josephine comes to her door, begging Louise to come out, warning her that shell get sick if she doesnt. Louise tells her to go away. She fantasizes about all the days and years ahead and hopes that she lives a long life. Then she opens the door, and she and Josephine start walking down the stairs, where Richards is waiting. The front door unexpectedly opens, and Brently comes in. He hadnt been in the train accident or even aware that one had happened. Josephine screams, and Richards tries unsuccessfully to block Louise from seeing him. Doctors arrive and pronounce that Louise died of a heart attack brought on by happiness.

Character List
Louise Mallard - A woman whose husband is reportedly killed in a train accident. When Louise hears the news, she is secretly happy because she is now free. She is filled with a new lust for life, and although she usually loved her husband, she cherishes her newfound independence even more. She has a heart attack when her husband, alive after all, comes home. Brently Mallard - Louises husband, supposedly killed in a train accident. Although Louise remembers Brently as a kind and loving man, merely being married to him also made him an oppressive factor in her life. Brently arrives home unaware that there had been a train accident.

Josephine - Louises sister. Josephine informs Louise about Brentlys death. Richards - Brentlys friend. Richards learns about the train accident and Brentlys death at the newspaper office, and he is there when Josephine tells the news to Louise.

Analysis of Major Characters

Louise Mallard
An intelligent, independent woman, Louise Mallard understands the right way for women to behave, but her internal thoughts and feelings are anything but correct. When her sister announces that Brently has died, Louise cries dramatically rather than feeling numb, as she knows many other women would. Her violent reaction immediately shows that she is an emotional, demonstrative woman. She knows that she should grieve for Brently and fear for her own future, but instead she feels elation at her newfound independence. Louise is not cruel and knows that shell cry over Brentlys dead body when the time comes. But when she is out of others sight, her private thoughts are of her own life and the opportunities that await her, which she feels have just brightened considerably.

Louise suffers from a heart problem, which indicates the extent to which she feels that marriage has oppressed her. The vague label Chopin gives to Louises problemheart troublesuggests that this trouble is both physical and emotional, a problem both within her body and with her relationship to Brently. In the hour during which Louise believes Brently is dead, her heart beats stronglyindeed, Louise feels her new independence physically. Alone in her room, her heart races, and her whole body feels warm. She spreads her arms open, symbolically welcoming her new life. Body and soul free! she repeats to herself, a statement that shows how total her new independence really is for her. Only when Brently walks in does her heart trouble reappear, and this trouble is so acute that it kills her. The irony of the ending is that Louise doesnt die of

joy as the doctors claim but actually from the loss of joy. Brentlys death gave her a glimpse of a new life, and when that new life is swiftly taken away, the shock and disappointment kill her.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Themes The Forbidden Joy of Independence In The Story of an Hour, independence is a forbidden pleasure that can be imagined only privately. When Louise hears from Josephine and Richards of Brentlys death, she reacts with obvious grief, and although her reaction is perhaps more violent than other womens, it is an appropriate one. Alone, however, Louise begins to realize that she is now an independent woman, a realization that enlivens and excites her. Even though these are her private thoughts, she at first tries to squelch the joy she feels, to beat it back with her will. Such resistance reveals how forbidden this pleasure really is. When she finally does acknowledge the joy, she feels possessed by it and must abandon herself to it as the word free escapes her lips. Louises life offers no refuge for this kind of joy, and the rest of society will never accept it or understand it. Extreme circumstances have given Louise a taste of this forbidden fruit, and her thoughts are, in turn, extreme. She sees her life as being absolutely hers and her new independence as the core of her being. Overwhelmed, Louise even turns to prayer, hoping for a long life in which to enjoy this feeling. When Brently returns, he unwittingly yanks Louises independence away from her, putting it once again out of her reach. The forbidden joy disappears as quickly as it came, but the taste of it is enough to kill her.

The Inherent Oppressiveness of Marriage Chopin suggests that all marriages, even the kindest ones, are inherently oppressive. Louise, who readily admits that her husband was kind and loving, nonetheless feels joy when she believes that he has died. Her reaction doesnt suggest any malice, and Louise knows that shell cry at Brentlys funeral. However, despite the love between husband and wife, Louise views Brentlys death as a release from oppression. She never names a specific way in which Brently oppressed her, hinting instead that marriage in general stifles both women and men. She even seems to suggest that she oppressed Brently just as much as he oppressed her. Louises epiphany in which these thoughts parade through her mind reveals the inherent oppressiveness of all marriages, which by their nature rob people of their independence. Motifs Weeping Louises weeping about Brentlys death highlight the dichotomy between sorrow and happiness. Louise cries or thinks about crying for about three-quarters of The Story of an Hour, stopping only when she thinks of her new freedom. Crying is part of her life with Brently, but it will presumably be absent from her life as an independent woman. At the beginning of the story, Louise sobs dramatically when she learns that Brently is dead, enduring a storm of grief. She continues weeping when she is alone in her room, although the crying now is unconscious, more a physical reflex than anything spurred by emotion. She imagines herself crying over Brentlys dead body. Once the funeral is over in her fantasies, however, there is no further mention of crying because shes consumed with happiness.

Symbols Heart Trouble The heart trouble that afflicts Louise is both a physical and symbolic malady that represents her ambivalence toward her marriage and unhappiness with her lack of freedom. The fact that Louise has heart trouble is the first thing we learn about her, and this heart trouble is what seems to make the announcement of Brentlys death so threatening. A person with a weak heart, after all, would not deal well with such news. When Louise reflects on her new independence, her heart races, pumping blood through her veins. When she dies at the end of the story, the diagnosis of heart disease seems appropriate because the shock of seeing Brently was surely enough to kill her. But the doctors conclusion that shed died of overwhelming joy is ironic because it had been the loss of joy that had actually killed her. Indeed, Louise seems to have died of a broken heart, caused by the sudden loss of her much-loved independence. The Open Window The open window from which Louise gazes for much of the story represents the freedom and opportunities that await her after her husband has died. From the window, Louise sees blue sky, fluffy clouds, and treetops. She hears people and birds singing and smells a coming rainstorm. Everything that she experiences through her senses suggests joy and springnew life. And when she ponders the sky, she feels the first hints of elation. Once she fully indulges in this excitement, she feels that the open window is providing her with life itself. The open window provides a clear, bright view into the distance and Louises own bright future, which is now unobstructed by the demands of another person. Its therefore no coincidence that when Louise turns from the window and the view, she quickly loses her freedom as well.

Structure and Style In The Story of an Hour, Chopin employs specific structural and stylistic techniques to heighten the drama of the hour. The structure Chopin has chosen for The Story of an Hour fits the subject matter perfectly. The story is short, made up of a series of shor t paragraphs, many of which consist of just two or three sentences. Likewise, the story covers only one hour in Louise Mallards lifefrom the moment she learns of her husbands death to the moment he unexpectedly returns alive. The short, dense structure mirrors the intense hour Louise spends contemplating her new independence. Just as Louise is completely immersed in her wild thoughts of the moment, we are immersed along with her in this brief period of time. This story can be read quickly, but the impact it makes is powerful. Chopin surprises us first with Louises elated reaction when she first murmurs free to herself. She shocks us again at the conclusion when she dies upon Brentlys return. The heart disease mentioned at the end of the story echoes the heart trouble discussed at the beginning, intensifying the twist ending and bringing the story to a satisfying close.

Because such a short story leaves no room for background information, flashbacks, or excessive speculation, Chopin succeeds in making every sentence important by employing an almost poetic writing style. She uses repetition to highlight important points, such as when she repeats the word open throughout the story to emphasize the freedom of Louises new life. She has Louise repeat the word free over and over again as well, which is one of the few words Louise actually speaks aloud in the story and indicates how much she cherishes her newfound freedom. Besides repeating words, Chopin also repeats phrases and sentence structures to highlight important points. For example, Chopin writes, She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday that she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. The identical phrasing of the second half of each sentence reveals how drastically Louises life has changedshe once shuddered at the thought of a long life, but now she prays

for it. Finally, Chopin makes the prose of the story beautiful by using alliteration and internal rhymes. For example, Josephine revealed in half concealing when she tells Louise the news, and Brently reappears composedly carrying his belongings. All of Chopins stylistic and structural techniques combine to make this very short story powerful. Important Quotations Explained 1. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought. This quotation appears after Louise has gone alone to her room to deal with the news of Brentlys death. After an initial fit of tears, Louise looks out her window at the wide open spaces below. This quotation is our first hint that Louises reaction to Brentlys death will be surprising and that Louise is very different from other women. Whereas most women would gaze reflectively at the sky and clouds, Louises gaze suggests something different, something shrewder or more active. What she sees as she gazes out the window is different from what other women would likely see after their husbands have died. Not long after this passage, Louise acknowledges the joyous feeling of independence that Brentlys death has given her. Here, at the window, the first breaths of these feelings are stirring, and her intelligent thought will quickly engage once again as she processes these feelings and allows herself to analyze what they mean. 2. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. This quotation appears close to the end of the story, just before Louise leaves her bedroom to go back downstairs, and illuminates the extent of Louises elation. Before Brentlys death, Louise viewed her life with trepidation, envisioning years of dull, unchanging dependence and oppression. The shudder she felt was one of dread.

Now, however, she is free and independent, and her life is suddenly worth living. Whereas she once hoped life would be short, she now prays for a long, happy life. This passage, besides showing us how fully Louise feels her independence, also highlights the unexpectedness of Louises reaction. Rather than dread a life lived alone, this solitude is, for Louise, reason enough to anticipate the future eagerly. When Brently returns, she dies, unable to face the return of the life that shed dreaded so much.