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The Story of An Hour


by Kate Chopin

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death. It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message. She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her. There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul. She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which someone was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window. She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams. She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought. There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air. Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under the breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body. She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome. There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination. And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being! "Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering. Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door." "Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window. Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife. When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.

[فراشًــــة المِحـــبْة]

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

Major Themes

Independence and autonomy
Many of the inner conflicts faced by Chopin's heroines are essentially issues of autonomy, in which the protagonist attempts to gain or regain an aspect of control in her life. Most notably, in "The Story of an Hour," Louise Mallard recognizes that the death of her husband and the subsequent breaking of the marriage tie will leave her an independent woman who is beholden to no one in her actions, and "Beyond the Bayou" ends with the main character La Folle realizing that the end of her fear of the world outside of the bayou's boundaries has given her a world of new possibilities. Nevertheless, Chopin sometimes shows that these moments of freedom can be extremely tenuous or temporary, as Mrs. Mallard discovers when her husband returns home uninjured, and as Mrs. Sommers finds when she is forced to return to her life of enforced frugality after a day of indulging her desires in "A Pair of Silk Stockings." Gender and identity
In many of her short stories, Chopin seeks to elucidate the previously marginalized point of view of the female, who belonged to what could be called an inferior class according to the laws and norms of the late nineteenth century. Although the female protagonists do not themselves consciously understand the role of the gendered power relations in their society, the heroine finds in a number of cases that she has very little power except through the proxy of her husband. For this reason, Louise Mallard feels a sense of exultation when she learns that her husband has died, and she reasons that the end of the obligations of marriage will free her to follow her own desires. In addition, in "Désirée's Baby," Désirée is forced into suicide not only because she cannot bear the lack of her husband Armand Aubigny's love, but also because she has no power to overrule his prejudices and ability to ruin her life. Opposition to societal norms
Kate Chopin's female protagonists are often highly unconventional characters who eventually choose not to follow the moral standards of their society, and she consistently portrays the choices of these women sympathetically rather than in a condemning manner. For example, in "The Kiss," the author shows Nathalie in her brazen attempts to fulfill the requirements of a socially and fiscally useful match by marrying Brantain while simultaneously maintaining passion in her romantic life by keeping Harvy as her lover. Nathalie ultimately fails to achieve her goal because Harvy defects from the relationship, but her characterization as a strong and ambitious woman suggests that she is comfortable ignoring the monogamous ideals of the men in her society, such as Brantain. Similarly, in "A Respectable Woman," Mrs. Baroda avoids an affair with Gouvernail because she wants to maintain her reputation as a respectable woman, but she later changes her mind, deciding that conforming to societal standards is not her main objective. Class and race
Because Chopin wrote most often about life in the antebellum, and occasionally in the postbellum, periods of the South in the United States, issues of class and race permeate her short stories, whether or not they come to the forefront of the narrative. "Désirée's Baby" tackles these topics in a particularly forthright manner, as Armand Aubigny chooses to ignore Désirée's lack of a family and consequently tenuous social status and marry her for love, later rejecting her because even though he can see past class, he harbors too strong of a racial prejudice to remain in love with Désirée. Désirée is unfortunate enough to appear on the wrong side of both class and race, and her desperate suicide and the revelation of her innocence provide a clear rejection of the prejudices inherent in contemporary Southern society. Elsewhere, in "Beyond the Bayou," Chopin provides another indication of the erroneous nature of nineteenth-century racial relations by revealing the black slave La Folle to be an inherently capable and strong woman. Love and desire
In a few of Chopin's stories, such as "The Locket," the main characters are driven by their love for one another, and in "Ma'ame Pélagie" and "Beyond the Bayou," the protective love of Pélagie and La Folle catalyzes the events of each narrative. However, in many cases, Chopin's protagonists face the prospect of illicit desires that are often of a sexual nature and that tend to oppose contemporary moral standards. In "The Kiss," for example, Nathalie is a strong female character who seeks to gain control over her life by marrying Brantain for money while still pursuing her affair with Harvy. For her part, in "A Respectable Woman," Mrs. Baroda is depicted at the juncture between two good friends, Gouvernail and Gaston. She is married to Gaston and appears to enjoy a loving, affectionate relationship with him, but her potential affair with Gouvernail suggests that desire is not always aligned with love, contrary to societal expectations. Life and death
"The Story of an Hour," "The Locket," and "Ma'ame Pélagie" are three of Chopin's short stories that deal particularly with the thin border between life and death, although several other stories also have the specter of death in the background of the narrative. In Chopin's writings, the physical livelihood of the protagonists is heavily influenced by their mental and emotional livelihood. Consequently, in "The Story of an Hour," Louise Mallard temporarily gains bodily strength as a result of her joy but dies in the shock of the end of her exuberance, and in "Ma'ame Pélagie," the title character gives up her past and in the process succumbs to old age. On the other hand, in "The Locket," those who are dead can also return to life, and while the presumed death of Edmond nearly kills Octavie's spirit, his return brings both of them back to youth. The Old South and the Civil War

The cataclysmic effects of the Civil War on the lives and environment of those in the southern United States form the historical background for the author's exploration of the psychology of the war's survivors. For instance, "The Locket" offers insight into the trauma of the Civil War not only for the Confederate soldiers such as Edmond, a rare male protagonist in Chopin's stories, but also for the women who remained at home such as Octavie, the protagonist of the story's second half. Chopin indicates that the war almost succeeds in taking away their youth, but she concludes optimistically by suggesting that Edmond's return from the war is capable of renewing their lives. In "Ma'ame Pélagie," however, the protagonist Ma'ame Pélagie never succeeds in moving beyond the tragedy of the war and the subsequent destruction of her home and her beloved Félix. Her inability to surmount the shadow of the past also almost succeeds in taking away the future of those around her, such as her younger sister Pauline.

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thanks for this analysis

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thx 5eo

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welcome