Story of an Hour: Finally Being Able to Admit That She Wanted Only to be Free
"When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills." Louise Mallard dies at the end of Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour" precisely for the reasons the doctors suggest. Heart disease serves as a metaphor for an affliction of the soul. Their diagnosis is most likely not a medical one, because could not possibly have been made with any scientific or medical accuracy. The doctors issued their statement when they arrived and not after an autopsy, and they could not have known the exact reasons for Mrs. Mallard's sudden demise. However, many signs point to the diagnosis as being an accurate one. Mrs. Mallard had a history of heart troubles and the narrator describes her physical condition in much detail throughout the story. The very first line of the story begins, "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." The passive voice lends a journalistic, objective tone to the story: "great care was taken" by all in the room and all who knew that Louise Mallard
" Indeed, love did not "matter" or "count for" anything "in the face of this possession of self assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!" If the strongest impulse of Louise Mallard's being was self assertion then seeing her husband's face again killed in her any desire to live. "The joy that kills" is a paradoxical assessment of the cause of death. Mallard is apparently so weak she must cling to her sister as they descend the stairs at the end of the tale, immediately before Brently walks through the door and shocks his wife. Joy, like any other intense emotion, creates changes in blood pressure and brain chemistry. Mallard died from profound shock, from the joy that kills. Her mental and emotional state are equally as important as Louise Mallard's physical weaknesses. The "joy that killed" was not joy at seeing Brently but the joy that she had allowed herself to feel during the hour of seclusion in her room. Yet based on the "feverish triumph in her eyes" and the sense of being utterly and completely "free," Louise Mallard was very much looking forward to the day her husband died and left her alone. On the one hand, the doctors do Louise a favor by assuming that she was overjoyed to see her husband. " Later the narrator enters Mallard's head more noting how Louise experiences a "a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
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Acceptance Essays
