Story of an Hour

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.