"The Story of an Hour" by S. Henry

The Story of an Hour

            Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” conveys to us two major messages of this story starting from when Mrs. Mallard expresses freedom when she becomes relieved after grieving over her husband’s death and the ironical twist towards the very end when her husband returns causing Mrs. Mallard to have a heart attack from over joy. As Louise goes to her room to grieve of her husband’s death, her sadness is then quickly replaced with a sense of solace. She realizes she is no longer tied down being someone else’s possession. She feels free from the bondages of marriage where she can be independent once again. Her moment of happiness is short lived of course when her husband turns out to still be alive as he returns back home. Seeing this, Mrs. Mallard is then shocked and overwhelmed by this realization and ends up having a heart attack and being the one who actually dies.

It is a story of a yearning for the freedom of independence married women once had as single individuals. Back then women were treated lesser than men. There was no equality between men and women. Men were given all the opportunities in life. They were able to vote and stand as an individual. They were able to support themselves with a good paying job. Men were given more options in jobs and careers. Women didn’t have as many options as men did. They were expected to find a husband to take care of them and take on the title and tasks of a housewife. Society thought women belonged at home and not in the workplace.

Women in earlier times were second class citizen. They had to know how and have the skills of being a housewife. They had to know how to cook and set a table for guests. They had to know how to make their home comfortable and inviting. They have to know how to clean around the house and keep things organized. They had to know how to buy clothes and how to make them. They had to know how to be thin and attractive. They were expected to bring babies into the world. They had to raise, care for, and look after their children until they are able to care for themselves or for girls, until she can marry and be taken care of by her husband. There weren’t very many employed women because have a job was more of a man’s title. If there were both men and women working at the same job, the women would get paid less than the man.

Louise Mallard is married to Mr. Mallard and as his wife during that time she was probably expected to stay home and do the house work. She most like wasn’t given the type of freedom that men had back then. As a woman, she was probably expected to find a husband to take care of her because she needed a man in her life to make the money. She wasn’t able to get a good job and support herself as easily as a man would. Being a wife to Mr. Mallard, she must have felt like more restrictions were put on her. Going out and finding a job of her own was probably out of the question because she was expected to be a house wife and take care of the house. Chances are, the types of daily tasks she was expected to do were to cook for herself and her husband, clean the house, and obey her husband like a good housewife. To be a housewife was her title. She felt her independency was taken away from once she got married because she did have her own opinion any more. Her husband was probably the one who made all the big decisions for them. She must have felt she didn’t have her own identity any more. She was probably depressed from being able to do so little on her own. Her heart condition was probably another contributing factor to her unhappiness. Being her husband’s wife was the only thing she could be and the only thing other people saw her as.

When her husband was out of the picture, she realized she could do anything she wished to. She could be anyone she wanted to be. She was her own person once again. She had her own identity. There was no limit to what she could do. Her only limitation was her imagination. Be a single adult woman wasn’t very common back then. So even the option of remarrying was a plausible choice for her considering she could do anything she wants now being a widow and all. She probably will only remarry if she absolutely has to. For example, if she finds that she is really unable to support herself, she will go looking for another man she can marry who can support them both. Being granted your freedom is like being given a second chance to start fresh in life. She was given another chance to start over. This is why her first words from her mouth after grieving for a little bit were “free”. The open window that she stared out of in her room is supposed to signify a window of opportunity. It signifies a second chance of freedom after her husband’s death. Not everyone gets a chance to start over. Let alone women.

As she climbed down those stairs feeling free in both body and soul, she had no idea what shocking and yet disappointing surprise awaited her as she reached the bottom of the stairs. Once her husband walked in through the door, her second chance at freedom was shattered. Her whole dream of being an independent woman fell apart as if she never had a chance from the start. Her husband walks through not knowing what could have happened to him and not knowing how his wife had reacted to the idea of him dying in an accident. Once Mrs. Mallard had seen her husband was not actually dead, her already weak heart could not take all the excitement and shock that she tragically had a heart attack. The idea of her being free from the bondages of marriage are long forgotten as if they never were.

The fact that Mrs. Mallard was the one who actually ended up dying was an ironical twist of Kate Chopin’s story. In the beginning of the story we were lead to believe that Mr. Mallard was the one who ended up dying but in reality he was nowhere near the accident they believed her was in. This leads to Mrs. Mallard’s thinking she is once again her own person. When we find out that Mr. Mallard hadn’t died in any sort of accident, we are then shot with another surprise of Mrs. Mallard having a heart attack and being the one who ends up dying in the end. Mrs. Mallard was believed to be the one who gets live on with her life and be a new person, but that wasn’t the case at all. Her husband is the one alive in the end and she was the one who dies. We also learn that Mrs. Mallard didn’t actually love her husband all that much either. The one who longed for freedom never had a chance at it. The main message of the story is a second chance at freedom and a brutal ironical twist we never expect.

Work Cited

Ann M. Woodlief. “"The Story of An Hour"Kate Chopin (1894)”. Ann Matthews Woodlief.

 https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/webtexts/hour/

Shmoop Editorial Team. "The Story of an Hour Theme of Freedom and Confidence." Shmoop.

 Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008., https://www.shmoop.com/story-of-

 hour/freedom-confinement-theme.html

Spark Notes. “The Story of an Hour – Kate Chopin”. Sparknotes.com,

 http://www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/the-story-of-an-hour/themes/