Kate Chopin in her short story, "The Story of an Hour", writes about a lady who
is in a marriage which is not fulfilling her. Published in 1894, "The Story of an Hour"
portrays the difficulty of a woman's promise to her husband and the sacrifice of her own
identity. She is known as someone's wife and is being vowed to a life of love. The only
way she can get freedom from this is through the freedom of being a wife. In this story,
Louise can only get freedom with the death of her husband. After getting the news about
the death of her husband she feels the freedom that she never realized before. She had a
feeling which she never had before but her feelings die along with her when she sees her
husband alive at the end of the story.
The story starts off with the breaking news of a railroad accident in which the
name of Mr. Brently Mallard tops the list of the people killed in the tragedy. The first
character who is introduced in the story is Mrs. Mallard who is a heart patient. Now
it's up to Josephine and Richards to reveal the bad news to Mrs. Mallard. They are
worried about her health condition but at the same time they have to tell her about the
unpleasant incident. Her sister Josephine is the one who gets the courage to break the
news to her. Unlike any other wife, Mrs. Mallard has a strange reaction to it which is
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same,
with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at
once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When
the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone.
She would have no one follow her. (Chopin 862)
She goes into her room and sits down on her cozy armchair "into this she sank,
pressed down by a physical exhaustio
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