The Story Of An Hour

New Life for Mrs. Mallard

The third person short story, "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin, takes place in the 1800's in late spring, late afternoon in a two story house. This ironic short story looks at her joy that her husband is dead and she is free. But then it ends with her own death when she learns he is alive.

As she is downstairs in the house, there she mourns the death of her husband. But she doesn't spend much time mourning the death of him: "She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms." This ends all mourning from her downstairs.

Mrs. Mallard goes up the stairs to a new outlook on life: "When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone." One where she is free without having to be held down by her husband. Upstairs in her room she looks out of her window and sees spring time. She feels a sense of new life, a new beginning: "Aquiver with the new spring life." She hopes for a new life after she has been through one that she hasn't really enjoyed.

She even begins to celebrate: "she said over and over under her breath free, free, free!" She is free from the burdens of an unwanted marriage that she has had to deal with in the past years. "There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself." In the previous years she has been controlled by her husband, but now that she thinks he's dead she realizes that she can make her own decisions.

Her hopes however, end when she goes back downstairs. "Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard," as soon as she sees her husband she dies instantly. In fact the doctor says, "she had died from heart disease--of joy that kills." She has apparently died from the shock of her husband being alive and her hopes of being

...