The Story of An Hour

Antonia Sanders
September 29, 2009
AP English III
The Story of An Hour
Kate Chopin
Many women maybe in unhappy and unhealthy marriages which can have you act upon being an emotional rollercoaster. Kate Chopin writes this story to give readers a vivid picture on how things can affect you and make your heart become very ill. Something was told in this story and it had a great affect on a lady named Mrs. Mallard. She feels grief, freedom, and then sad again in this story.
When Mrs. Mallard hears the news about her husband she suddenly feels grief. She has great pain about hearing about her husband. “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms”. In this quote you can see how Mrs. Mallard cries and how she abandons herself from the news. She also sits alone in room and looks out the window where she is “pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and reached into her soul”. This shows that physically the death is making her tired which also affects her soul and is taking a toll on her. Kate Chopin’s diction she uses helps readers get a better understanding on what emotions Mrs. Mallard is feeling. She uses words like crying, faintly, motionless, and dull.
Mrs. Mallard suddenly changes tremendously wants this sinks in her head. She suddenly begins to say “free, free, free!” These words show that she has opened her eyes to see that she can begin her a new life. Readers may think from her saying this that her marriage may have been bad, she wasn’t happy being with her husband, or she was locked down and couldn’t live her life how she wanted. The ways her eyes change from terror to them staying bright and keen shows a sign of relief and joy she feels. Kate Chopin states “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself”. This quote shows us that all along while being married Mrs. Mallard had no life of her own she was living her life for someone else. Now that she thinks her husband is dead she is free to do what she wants and likes to do.
Mrs. Mallard acted like an emotional rollercoaster which may had caused to her death. At first she was mourning about the death of her husband that she sometimes loved but often she didn’t. Then she had a change of heart about being sad because reality sunk in and she knew she was free. All of a sudden at the end of the story when her sister comes to her room she breaks down again. She then gets astonished from seeing her husband who was supposed to be dead coming in the house. As it was said in the beginning of the story Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with heart trouble. All the emotions that crossed her mind and ran through her body made it even worse and was the cause of her dying because of the heart disease.
In the end I saw that being in a marriage that you are not happy in can make break you, but once something bad comes along you may have many emotions. Kate Chopin main purpose was to show readers that Mrs. Mallard could have embarked a life of freedom that she didn’t see coming to her. Unfortunately she doesn’t get that chance because her freedom soon dies.