Kate Chopin's Short Stories Summary and

Analysis of "The Story of an Hour"

Upon hearing the news of Brently Mallard's tragic railroad accident death
in the newspaper office, his friend Richards rushes to the Mallards' house,
where he and Mrs. Mallard's sister Josephine gently inform the weak-
hearted Mrs. Mallard of Brently's death. In response, Louise
Mallard weeps openly before going to sit alone in her room.
Exhausted, Mrs. Mallard sits motionless in her armchair by the window and
looks at all the beauty of the outside world, occasionally sobbing. She is
young, with a calm and strong face, but she stares dully into the sky while
she waits nervously for a revelation. Finally, she realizes despite her initial
opposition that she is now free. Terror leaves her eyes while her pulse beats
faster.

Mrs. Mallard knows that she will mourn her loving husband's death, but she
also predicts many years of freedom, which she welcomes. She begins
planning her future, in which she will live without the burden of other people.
She loved her husband, more or less, but love is nothing to her when
compared to independence, she decides, as she murmurs, "Free! Body and
soul free!"

Josephine asks Mrs. Mallard to let her enter because she is afraid that the
grieving widow will make herself ill, but Mrs. Mallard is actually imagining the
happiness of the years ahead. In fact, only the day before she had feared
living a long life. Triumphantly, she answers the door and goes downstairs
with her arm around Josephine's waist, where Richards awaits.

At this moment, Brently Mallard comes in the front door, having been
nowhere near the train disaster. Richards moves in front of him to hide him
from seeing his wife when she cries out. By the time the doctors arrive, she
has died from "heart disease," purportedly from "the joy that kills."

Analysis
Chopin tackles complex issues involved in the interplay of female
independence, love, and marriage through her brief but effective
characterization of the supposedly widowed Louise Mallard in her last hour of
life. After discovering that her husband has died in a train accident, Mrs.
Mallard faces conflicting emotions of grief at her husband's death and
exultation at the prospects for freedom in the remainder of her life. The latter
emotion eventually takes precedence in her thoughts. As with many
successful short stories, however, the story does not end peacefully at this
point but instead creates a climactic twist. The reversal--the revelation that
her husband did not die after all-- shatters Louise's vision of her new life and
ironically creates a tragic ending out of what initially appeared to be a
fortuitous turn of events. As a result, it is Mr. Mallard who is free of Mrs.
Mallard, although we do not learn whether the same interplay of conflicting
emotions occurs for him.

Chopin presents Mrs. Mallard as a sympathetic character with strength and

insight. As Louise understands the world, to lose her strongest familial tie is
not a great loss so much as an opportunity to move beyond the "blind
persistence" of the bondage of personal relationships. In particular, American
wives in the late nineteenth century were legally bound to their husbands'
power and status, but because widows did not bear the responsibility of
finding or following a husband, they gained more legal recognition and often
had more control over their lives. Although Chopin does not specifically cite
the contemporary second-class situation of women in the text, Mrs. Mallard's
exclamations of "Free! Body and soul free!" are highly suggestive of the
historical context.

Beyond the question of female independence, Louise seems to suggest that

although Brently Mallard has always treated their relationship with the best
of intentions, any human connection with such an effect of permanence and
intensity, despite its advantages, must also be a limiting factor in some
respects. Even Louise's physical description seems to hint at her personality,
as Chopin associates her youthful countenance with her potential for the
future while mentioning lines that "bespoke repression and even a certain
strength." Although neither her sister nor Brently's friend Richards would be
likely to understand her point of view, Louise Mallard embraces solitude as
the purest prerequisite for free choice.

Mrs. Mallard's characterization is complicated by the fleeting nature of her

grief over her husband, as it might indicate excessive egotism or shameless
self-absorption. Nevertheless, Chopin does much to divert us from
interpreting the story in this manner, and indeed Mrs. Mallard's conversion to
temporary euphoria may simply suggest that the human need for
independence can exceed even love and marriage. Notably, Louise Mallard
reaches her conclusions with the suggestive aid of the environment, the
imagery of which symbolically associates Louise's private awakening with the
beginning of life in the spring season. Ironically, in one sense, she does not
choose her new understanding but instead receives it from her surroundings,
"creeping out of the sky." The word "mallard" is a word for a kind of duck, and
it may well be that wild birds in the story symbolize freedom.

To unify the story under a central theme, Chopin both begins and ends with a
statement about Louise Mallard's heart trouble, which turns out to have both
a physical and a mental component. In the first paragraph of "The Story of an
Hour," Chopin uses the term "heart trouble" primarily in a medical sense, but
 over the course of the story, Mrs. Mallard's presumed frailty seems to be
largely a result of psychological repression rather than truly physiological
factors. The story concludes by attributing Mrs. Mallard's death to heart
disease, where heart disease is "the joy that kills." This last phrase is
purposefully ironic, as Louise must have felt both joy and extreme
disappointment at Brently's return, regaining her husband and all of the loss
of freedom her marriage entails. The line establishes that Louise's heart
condition is more of a metaphor for her emotional state than a medical
reality.

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"The Story of an Hour"
"Beyond the Bayou"
"Ma'ame Plagie"
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