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Angela Kelly
Vines
ENC1102

Literary Analysis: The Story of an Hour

The Story of an Hour was written during the nineteenth century, a time of womens
liberation. The story has a dramatic theme that addresses personal issues that women
encountered in marriage. This story was about a marriage, and the loss of a life after receiving
shocking news. The author may be writing from her own experiences of loss, passion and
suffering. This story uses the literary elements of conflict, symbolism and imagery which helps
to develop the action and a major theme.
The theme foreshadows the life of the main character, Mrs. Mallard. We read that she has
a heart condition, and is informed of her husbands sudden and tragic death. Conflict builds at
this point in the story and transitions into dramatic scenes that reveal the state of mind of the
main character. Other characters in the story help to support the character who seemed to be
trapped in an unhappy marriage, yet she is close to her sister, who delivers the bad news. It was
her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences, veiled hints that revealed in half
concealing (Chopin 115). The story has an omniscient third person narrator who reveals,
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break her
as gently as possible the news of her husbands death (Chopin 115). This complication helped to
lead to the climax of the story, thus revealing the storys symbolism and imagery. The mindset of
the main character was revealed by the author, and readers could get a glimpse into her feelings.

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The main characters oppression is revealed through symbolism as we read, Shocked by
the news, Mrs. Mallard locks herself into her room to have some time to reflect (115). Thus the
title, The Story of an Hour, is befitting because it was during this one-hour time-frame that
Mrs. Mallard used to reflect over her marriage, and new found freedom. It seems that the main
character is happy that her husband is dead as she ponders her former life with him. The author
of the story often wrote about women and their unhappy marriages:
As in The Awakening, Chopin depicts a conflict in Her Letters between social
expectations that woman subordinate thought, expression, and personhood in marriage to the
needs of her husbandthe wife as object to be possessedand female desire for social and
sexual equalityself-possession. (Weinstock 49)
The author was a widow, who wrote controversial stories for a living wage. Her stories
are engaging and indulging when it comes to love, desire and the human bond. The author
created Mrs. Mallard as an emotional character who really could not express herself like she
really wanted to. Retreating to her private bedroom, readers can see that this is revealed once she
enters her bedroom for reflection and contemplation. During this time, the hour, where Mrs.
Mallard could easily see herself living a better life. She was looking forward to her freedom with
sheer excitement. The atmosphere in the room where she mourned was filled with imagery,
symbolism and drama.
The author uses the characters, Richards and Mr. Mallard to introduce the paradoxical
irony and significance into the plot of the well written story. Readers can tell that the era was
during the patriarchal period. According to Steve Doloff, The first name of the central character,
Louise, does not appear until the seventeenth of the twenty-three paragraphs that comprise Kate
Chopins much admired short story The Story of an Hour (1894) (580). Women did not

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express their feelings during that time of history, and it is evident as readers do not find out the
name of the main character until later in the story.
At the end of the story is where the climax appears and the story takes a turn. The main
character, Mrs. Mallard has a heart attack and suddenly dies when her husband walked through
the door after she thought he was dead. The shock of him being alive, and not dead is what killed
Mrs. Mallard. The sheer thought of thinking he was gone, experiencing liberation and to have it
abruptly taken away, caused her to go into cardiac arrest. The shock of seeing his face killed Mrs.
Mallard. She would rather die than go back to a life of misery with a man who didnt seem to
love her very much. Mrs. Mallard expected freedom because Mr. Mallards death would liberate
her from a sad future:
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.
And yet she loved himsometimes. Often she had not. (Chopin 116)
Mrs. Mallard thought she was free, and had to remain that way. There was no way that
she could go back to a life where her time and days would not be her own, but would belong to
someone else.

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Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. The Story of an Hour. LIT. Kirszner, Laurie and Stephen Mandell. Boston, MA,
Wadsworth, 2012. 115-117. Print.
Doloff, Steven. "Kate Chopin's Lexical Diagnostic in 'The Story of an Hour' (1894)." Notes and
Queries 61.4 (2014): 580-581. Academic OneFile. Web. 7 November 2016.
Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew. "In Possession of the Letter: Kate Chopin's 'Her Letters'." Studies in
American Fiction 30.1 (2002): 45+. Academic OneFile. Web. 7 November 2016.