Irony In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

Irony in "The Story of an Hour." In "The Story of an Hour" Mrs. Mallard is greeted by her sister and friends who speak very gentle and in euphemistic talk of the death of her beloved husband. She weeps for a great while, trying to think of how she is going to go on. After she has cried all she could, she retreats to her room to mourn in solitude. She sits and looks out the window, and is slowly becoming more and more adapted to the thought of her husband being gone. Eventually she is overcome with a longing for freedom, and is relieved her husband has passed on. She loved him sometimes, but she is now feeling her own sense of being. She goes back down the stairs feeling better than ever, and more full of ease. As she reaches
Whether it be an ambulance driver running over the impaired patient, or in classic movies like the Wizard of Oz when the cowardly lion only wants courage and discovers he had it all along. Sometimes it may be quite humorous, other times tragic. Much like in "The Story of an Hour." The irony pulsates in this story, mostly tragic, some funny. At the start of this short story Mrs. Mallard's sister and friends assume that Mrs. Mallard and her husband had a very wonderful marriage and were very deeply in love, they take great lengths to tell her gently about the death of her so thought beloved husband. She seems very much upset at the thought of her husband no longer being around at first. After her fit of crying, she realizes how wonderful her life would be. She realized all these years she has had a horrible life with this man. She loved him 'sometimes' and thought she was "free, free, free." When he arrives back home without a single scratch on him, Mrs. Mallard dies of a heart attack. This is also irony for the reader. One would suspect Mrs. Mallard to stay in her period of grieving for a long amount of time, not see her become more alive than before in a single