Disappointment in Kate Chopins Story of an Hour Essay -- Story Hour e

Disappointment in The horizontal surface of an Hour The Story of an Hour is a short story in which Kate Chopin, the author, presents an often unhearable of view of marriage. Published in the late eighteen hundreds, the oppressive genius of marriage in The Story of an Hour may well be a reflection of, though non exclusive to, that era. Mrs. Louise mallard, Chopins main character, experiences the excitement of freedom rather than the desolation of loneliness after she learns of her husbands death. Later, when Mrs. Mallard learns that her husband, Brently, lock up lives, she know that all hope of freedom is gone. The crushing disappointment kills Mrs. Mallard. though Chopin relates Mrs. Mallards story, she does not do so in first person. Chopin reveals the story finished a narrators voice. The narrator is not simply an observer, however. The narrator knows, for example, that Mrs. Mallard, for the most part, did not love her husband (paragraph 15). It is o bvious that the narrator knows more than can be physically observed. Chopin, however, never tells the reader what Mrs. Mallard is feeling. Instead, the reader must imagine into Mrs. Mallards actions and words in order to understand what Mrs. Mallard feels. Mrs. Mallard is held backbone in her marriage. The lines of her face bespoke repression (paragraph 8). When Mrs. Mallard learns of her husbands death, she knows that there will be no powerful will bending her (paragraph 14). There will be no husband who believes he has the right to impose a snobby will upon a fellow creature (paragraph 14). Mrs. Mallard acknowledges that her husband love her.... ... deportment. When Brently walks in the door, though, Mrs. Mallard knows that she will have to spend the rest of her invigoration as no more than his wife, just as she had been. She knows that she will never be free. This is too much for Mrs. Mallard to handle. Life had been grim before, with her facial expre ssion forward to the years ahead with a shudder (paragraph 19). Now that Mrs. Mallard has tasted what life might have been like without her husband, the idea of resuming her former life is unbearably grim. When Mrs. Mallard sees that her husband still lives, she dies, killed by the disappointment of losing everything she so recently thought she had gained. Work Cited Chopin, Kate. The Story of an Hour. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. capital of Minnesota Lauter, et al. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Lexington Heath, 1994. 644-46.