Imagine you are at home, engaging in normal activities. Suddenly, there is a knock at the door. Standing on the other side, are your sister and your husband's friend. The news is not good. Your husband is dead. Such is the experience of Mrs. Mallard in Kate Chopin's short work, The Story of an Hour. This is a woeful tale of a domestically repressed Victorian woman who experiences the momentary joy of freedom after hearing her husband is killed in a railroad accident. Chopin gives the reader two contrasting views of our protagonist – downstairs, a frail, helpless, loving wife and upstairs, a strong, empowered woman who doesn't realize she is dissatisfied with her marriage until her husband is dead.
             At the beginning of the story, the reader is told Louise Mallard has a weak heart. Her sister, Josephine, and a friend of her husband's arrive to tell her the news. Mrs. Mallard is told ever so gently, "in broken sentences" and "veiled hints", of the demise of her husband. She exhibits the socially acceptable reaction of a devoted loving wife --weeping with "wild abandonment" after which, she goes upstairs to her room and locks herself in. Her sister is concerned and talks to her through the keyhole begging to be let in. The sister fears she is going to make herself ill. All of this leads us to believe that the sister and friend think Mrs. Mallard may be precariously balancing between life and death herself. These thoughts are confirmed, when she drops dead upon seeing her husband alive.
             Upstairs, Louise Mallard undergoes a considerable transformation. At first, she is thinking about her marriage and how she "sometimes" loved him. She realizes there will be more tears when she sees his face, a face that never looked upon her with love, "fixed and gray and dead." She thinks about his harsh domination. Sitting in the comfortable armch
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