Louise Mallard In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

Louise Mallard, the protagonist in Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour”, was informed before this passage that her husband has died in a railroad accident. She asks to be left alone and goes to her room, everyone assumes to go grieve, but this passage shows her actual response to the news. Instead of sobbing or any other natural responses to the death of a loved one, Louise responds to the news by whispering the words “free, free, free!” over and over again. Like many women of this time (this short story was published in 1894) marriages were usually heavily influenced by parents or financial reasons, women didn’t really have a choice but to accept their fate and obey. Her marriage felt like a jail to her, she felt caged in and now, through the death of her husband she feels relaxed and free to do as she will. For women in those days, a woman went from being controlled by her father to being controlled by their husband but once those two were out of the way they were free to enjoy their widowhood. Louise feels like every inch of her body is relaxed upon hearing the news, her response isn’t a normal one in
fact it’s very selfish and insensitive of her but she also feels it cancels out because she was wronged by being forced to stay in a loveless marriage. Louise suggests that before her husband's death she was a slave forced into blind obedience. Louise says in another paragraph “she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.” she had been living her life for someone else and that even though she felt that no one had the right to do that she had just given in and obeyed. Louise before felt confined but now her mind is flowing with ideas about freedom and what she’ll do with the rest of her life. In this short story we get a lot of how Louise reacts but that just puts an emphasis of one of the most important aspects of her character, she is deeply miserable and even suicidal, “It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.” she literally wished to be put out of her misery. Chopin was one of the first feminist and modernist writers to ever question exactly how women feel about marriage.
The way in which Chopin writes Louise Mallard, she's not really her own person, she has never been allowed to be and this short story is her reaction to the short time in which she believed and was exhilarated by the thought of being able to live for herself. No one knows of her misery or even bothers to ask if she is happy or feels oppressed. Chopin wanted to show that behind every woman is a thousand thoughts and emotions, not just an obedient wife or daughter. Women were having their voices and their free will taken from them, some of them felt that freedom would only come when death did or some “the lucky ones” would have the men who governed their lives pass away and then they would be able to manage their time and life the way they wanted
to.