Illusions: The Story of an Hour

Illusions in “The Story of an Hour” Kate Chopin's work, "The Story of an Hour," deals with, among other issues, the illusive nature of life. In the story, every character is under the spell of some misunderstanding of facts. In the very beginning, Richards leads us to believe the false information that Mrs. Mallard's husband has died in a railroad disaster. This misrepresentation creates a chain of misunderstanding, from Mr. Mallard's friend Richards, through Mrs. Mallard's sister Josephine, to Mrs. Mallard, as well as us readers. To illustrate, Richards is the first one to receive the intelligence. Though he does reconfirm it, the truth is not revealed to him. Convinced of its truthfulness, he then passes the incorrect information to Josephine and Mrs. Mallard, both of whom accept the message without any doubt. Their ignorance of the reality is helpless, since for each one the source of the information received seems highly credible. The love and marriage relationship are also delusive in this story. Presupposing that Mr. and Mrs. Mallard are happily married, Richards and Josephine disclose the sad message to Mrs. Mallard "as gently as possible," especially when she has a heart trouble. However, they can never claim to comprehend the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Mallard, because as outsiders, they can see no further than the apparent action of the couple. Even Mrs. Mallard herself is in a maze about love. She seldom, if ever, questioned her position in the marriage life. Only in retrospective isolation does she come to some vague understanding about her past relationship with her spouse. He tended to "impose a private will" on her, and she felt ambivalent about him: "she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not." In this "brief moment of illumination," instead of sorrow she feels only freedom and hope, recognizing a brand-new life of self-assertion, and ignoring the "unsolved mystery" of love. With all that, her epiphany is