Story of an hour

She grew up during the Civil War and this caused her to be separated from the one friend she had made at the sacred Heart Academy, Kitty Garesche. In 1870, at the age of twenty, she married Oscar Chopin, twenty-five, and the son of a wealthy cotton-growing family in Louisiana. She wrote “The Story of An Hour”. In the end, the equilibrium of her situation is what survives: Brently Mallard’s return signals the return of her oppressive condition and ensures that Louise Mallard will experience no more than a momentary change in her situation. It is this unchanging prospect-the preservation of her oppressive condition-that proves Louise Mallard, or rather her circumstances, fatal to herself.

Only When Louise has become “free! Body and soul free!” is the addressed directly in the text and by her own name. It means when she had disease, she wanted to get freedom from disease. What did it matter! What could love the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being?

She said it over and over under her breath: “free, free, free!” when she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She suffered in her medical and marital conditions, but she also poses a threat to herself, as her sister Josephine warns. This danger is particularly noticeable, since all of the action in the story revolves around Louise Mallard’s preservation. Everything is orchestrated to save her from any sudden and/or extreme distress.

Although Brently “Had never looked save with love upon her,” he disregarded Louise’s happiness: The “lines [of her face] bespoke repression. Her marriage exemplifies the status of women in the early twentieth century in that the woman is subject to the patriarch’s “powerful will bending hers.” When Brently Mallard entered in the house, she died heart disease-of joy that kills.

When Chopin wrote “The Story of An Hour,” a woman was still looked upon as needing the protection and support of her husband. Many of Chopin’s female characters, however, seek freedom from the conventional restraints of society, including marriage. Although women could own property and file for divorce when Chopin wrote this story, independent women were still frowned upon.