"Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long."
             This passage is indicative of Mrs. Mallard's feelings that lead to her death. In the beginning of the story, she is told that her husband was killed in a train crash. Her reaction is not normal from the very beginning. Most people respond to this sort of news with shock. They are so surprised by the news and unwilling to accept it that they become almost paralyzed by it. Mrs. Mallard responds in a very opposite way. She began to cry right when she heard it and left to be by herself. This was the first hint that her reaction to her husband's death would be very different than the way other's would react in the same situation.
             The first hint that she will receive her husband's death with joy comes on the end of the first page where it says, "she was young." This indicates that she is beginning to feel something that she has not felt in a long time. In the next paragraph it talks about the sounds, scents, and colors that she is experiencing. This feeling is not something that she can control and it is beginning to overcome her.
             She begins to repeat to herself the word "free" as she continues to feel this new sensation. This is representative of how she feels now that she has no husband around anymore. She must have felt restricted and held down by him. The life she had was not how she had wanted it to be. She now has gotten a glimpse of something more, a better life, the kind of life that she had imagined she would have when she was young. She refers to her husband as a "powerful will bending her in that blind persistence with which men and women beli
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