Blog Number Three

In “The Story of an Hour” Kate Chopin begins her story introducing a lady named Mrs. Mallard as a woman who has been affected with a heart trouble due to hearing the news of her husband’s death from a railroad disaster. Mrs. Mallard receives the tragic news from her sister and husbands friend. Her sister and her husband’s friend know of her heart trouble and this is the reason they try to tell her the news carefully, thinking this news will greatly affect her heart condition. On the contrary, we soon learn that she is actually going through a series of different emotions and feelings after hearing the news of her husbands’ death. “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 Brentley Mallard’s name leading the list of “killed” (Chopin 337). Because Chopin describes Mrs. Mallard as a woman with heart trouble, in the story you would think that since she has this type of illness hearing the news of her husband’s death would deeply sadden her and possibly make her heart condition worse. Ironically, in a weird, strange way she seems relieved that her husband has died and now she has become a free soul. “She walked into her room alone and wanted no one to follow her. “When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: “free, free, free!” (Chopin 338). The next statement from the narrator made me feel sad, and I don’t know why but it my favorite part of the story! The statement has such a deep meaning and with just that one statement alone you could really feel the pain and suffering she had been through as a married woman. During these old ages I get the feeling that many women who were married used to feel that way. “The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes” (Chopin 338). She had an empty stare and in her eyes you could see that she had been scared then suddenly it’s gone, you get a sense that she had been enlightened, reborn again. With everything discussed above and after reading this short story one begins to wonder whether this woman ever did love her husband. And it is almost as if the narrator knew we would begin wonder, in paragraph 15 we get some kind of answer along with an explanation. “And yet she loved him-sometimes. Often she had not. 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!” (Chopin 338). At the end of the story we learn some sort of mistake has occurred. Brentley Mallard opens the front door, after all he was alive and he had been far from the accident and didn’t even know about it. The doctors came in and said Mrs. Mallard has died of heart disease. Ironically, the doctors say that she has died of joy that kills. Now we are all left contemplating the reason Mrs. Mallard has died. She could have possibly been so shocked to see her husband alive and because of her heart condition she died suddenly with such utter disbelief.