Complicated Love: The Story Of An Hour By Kate Chopin

“The story of an Hour” is a basically a story about an inner battle that the main character Louise has to deal with, as she faces living life after her husband Brently has passed away. The story begins with Louise sister Josephine breaking the news of her husband’s death, which was first announced by Richard the family friend. This send an emotionally distressed Louise crying to her room sad at the news of Brentlys death. Once alone Mrs. Mallard started to feel a strange feeling that kept getting greater the more she stared out

"The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin portrays one significant hour in the life of Mrs. Mallard. She has two problems at the beginning of the story. She was afflicted with heart trouble, and she has just been told her husband, Brently, was killed in an accident. Mrs. Mallard initially cannot contain her grief as “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms.”(Chopin) She soon goes to her room to rest and contemplate this life altering news.

In the past many decades the definition of what a marriage means changed dramatically in some areas. For the author of both stories, Kate Chopin, she wanted the reader to get something out of the story. She likes to explore all types of themes in her stories such as, racism, the roles of women, and adultery. With these themes and messages she struggled to have most of her stories published. In many of her stories she passed along these messages through the manner of a marriage. In her short stories “The Story of an Hour” and “Desiree 's Baby” she showed just how different marriages could be as well as how similar they can be. Chopin portrays the lives of the main characters, Louise Mallard from “The Story of An Hour” and Desiree Aubigny

Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor discusses many topics and insights that can be found in literature. Foster explains how each are used and the purposes they serve while providing numerous examples. Many of Foster’s insights can be found in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of An Hour” which was written during a time in history when women were often restricted by society and marriage. The story speaks of a woman who felt freed from the burden of marriage when she thought her husband died, only to die the moment she realized he was actually alive. Foster’s insights about weather, heart disease, and flight that are evident in “The Story of An Hour” greatly influence the story’s interpretation in several ways.

In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”, the main character, Mrs. Louise Mallard, is a woman with a heart problem that gets horrifying news that her husband has passed away in a train crash. When she starts thinking about her freedom, she gets excited; she is happy to start her new, free life. However, a few hours later her husband walks in the door and she finds out it was all a mistake. When she realizes her freedom is gone her heart stop and she then dies. In “Desiree’s Baby” Desiree is an orphaned woman who married her loving husband, Armand, and they are very much in love. In Kate Chopin’s short story is says, “"He was reminded that she was nameless. What did it matter about a name when he could give her one of the oldest and proudest in Louisiana?" (24-26). When they finally have a baby, they notice that the child is showing marks that he is a mix of two races. The husband blames the wife because of her unknown past and sends her and the baby away for good. Later, as he is cleaning out their old stuff, he finds a letter that says, in fact, he is the one of mixed race and not her. The husband then realizes he gave up everything he cared about over a silly mistake. Both of these stories show the women struggling in their marriages. It is typical for Kate Chopin to show the dominance in the male characters, especially in the marriages as it was in the “Old South”, when women were meant to serve their husbands. Rena Korb says, “In certain ways, "Desiree 's Baby" is

At this point, the veil of Connie’s naïve perception and reality breaks through. This begins the very quick transition from childhood to adulthood. As this change and discourse continues, Connie becomes afraid: “She backed away from the door but did not want to go into another part of the house … Her eyes darted around the kitchen. She could not remember this place, what it was, this room.”

“The story of an hour” by Kate Chopin was a story that was ironical yet profoundly deep. As a student I have been asked to read “a story of an hour” many times, and every time I’m surprised by how I enjoy it. People can read thousands of stories in their life times and only a handful will every stand out to them, stories that can draw out an emotion or spark a thought are the ones that will standout more. For me and “a story of an hour” the thought of freedom is what draws me the most as a teenage I would feel a deep and heavy cage that traps me in its invisible snarl. It is hard to explain why one feels that way many a times feelings are just a way of showing frustration. Mrs. Mallard I assume has many frustrations, and she associated her imprisonment with her marriage to her husband. In many versions Mrs. Mallard says he is not a mean man and she did have feelings. It is just an unexplainable blanket of depression that anyone can fall through. Like a cold or an unsuspecting wounds one cannot prevent what one does not know of until it becomes apparent .as the story progresses I add more of my own emotion and slowing I draw a bridge that connects me to the basic feel of the story. In the begging I am just an outsider looking in not yet connected with their feeling, then the realization hits one and so does mine, and finally when Mrs. Mallard freedom from her is taken yet it is not. This is what make the story believable the unchained freedom of feelings that is taboo for

“Her room, where she could always find comfort and consolation. But her room, too, had been ruined. She had loved that room, the predominance of blue, her favorite color. And all her favorite things. Her special glass menagerie of frogs and puppys and kittens. The posters on the wall-New Kids and Bruce and messages like after the rain, the rainbow, so many posters that her father said he could have saved the price of wallpaper if he’d known about her poster madness. The room was her turf, her refuge, her hiding place. Where she could close the door and shut out the world, the C- in math- the worst mark of her life- the zits popping out all over her face, the agony of Timmy Kearns ignoring her after the first date. Her place of retreat to which she admitted only Patty and Leslie, with standing orders for

She grieves for her husband a very short time. She then begins to feel a sense of freedom. This initially makes her feel guilty and

This void she is feeling is because of the hole her husband's death left in her heart. She, not wanting to endure this pain again, decides to

of her parents. She may have buried her grief, but she’s still haunted by memories of the man she once loved, and a relationship cut short by tragedy.

Whenever she walks through the doors alone, it is showing her entering into the business market as a monopoly. When she walks further in, and takes her drink, it was like they were welcoming her into the world of business. She begins to talk about how she has trials and tribulations to get to where she is going to. This could be explained with a financial crisis like she was going through herself because she was not able to have the money to get the building that she wanted. When she pushed the ladder back up to the man who was falling, it had shown how she was not going to let anything stop her from making it to the

Two shelves of old stuffed animals sitting and watching from above the windows. A closet full of the clothes that make her blend into the crowd like a ghost. The clothes that made her known as that girl who busted the party. A trip to the past every second, she sits in her bed drifting back into the past each night just to remind her that a new beginning is here, and nothing else will take her down. This room was her for the hardest parts of her life. The place where everything was fought from the aftermath of the rape, to the pain of losing her friends, and the feeling that no one was ever going to understand. The same pillow used to cover her head on nights with overbearing yelling from her parents, or thoughts pounding her head. This was a room of remembrance of everything she made it through, and the courage she built up during it.

The night before, she got incredibly drunk, and managed to nearly kill her father and herself, having already killed her brother by drunk driving. So A wakes up incredibly hungover and not able to access anything, with the body’s mind in such a turbulent state. “When I get to the door, I find it’s locked. There should be a key that lets me out, but somebody’s taken it. I'm trapped in my own room.” A wearily thinks when waking up from a nap, feeling utterly alone, and attempting to go out of the room to talk to Rhiannon, to inform her and find comfort in her. However, A is isolated from her, stuck miles away and with no access to

Kate Chopin provides her reader with an enormous amount of information in just a few short pages through her short story, “The Story of an Hour.” The protagonist, Louise Mallard, realizes the many faults in romantic relationships and marriages in her epiphany. “Great care [is] taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death” (Chopin 168). Little do Josephine and Richards know, the news will have a profoundly positive effect on Louise rather than a negative one. “When she abandoned herself,” Mrs. Mallard opened her mind to a new way of life. The word usage shows that the protagonist experienced a significant change. This life wouldn’t be compromised by her partner’s will, which will enable her to live for