Point Of View In Louise Mallard's The Story Of An Hour

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Point of view, if changed, can render a reader’s entire interpretation different. Though it seems insignificant next to other tasks given to an author such as plot or word choice, a simple shift in the perspective of a story can change the entire meaning. “The Story of an Hour” is a story, which if not read closely can be considered a tad confusing with its surprising shifts in emotion and unforeseeable end. The point of view of this story is third person omniscient limited, which is proved by our ‘fly on the wall’ view and aided by a knowledge of Louise Mallard’s thoughts and feelings. In reality, while point of view is overlooked much of the time, any other point of view would change the readers’ interpretations of “The Story of
Seeing the event through Mrs. Mallard’s eyes would give us more insight as to how the hour went, and therefore, greater understanding of what literally occurred within the time. However, we would be unable to get the full background of the story and unable to understand as easily. This would cloud a reader’s understanding of the event as a whole. On the other hand, an upside of first person from Mrs. Mallard’s perspective would be that the readers would more thoroughly understand her conflicting emotions about her husband. Some of the small, easily missed details would be more apparent, but we would lose a good portion of understanding in that we would lose the entire exposition, the way it is currently written. In addition to losing the stage-setting beginning, if the story was written in a true first person perspective from Louise Mallard’s point of view, we would lose the ending entirely. This would be a tragedy, as the ending line is the most striking. First person from Mrs. Mallard’s perspective would sully the story too greatly at essential parts, but that doesn’t entirely discredit the first person
A first person perspective from a minor character would give us more of a general view on the Mallards’ relationship. In addition, we’d likely gain more insight into Louise’s past or outward treatment of her relationship if it was from Josephine’s perspective. If it was Richards’ perspective, we’d learn more about Mr. Mallard and the incident which was thought to have ended his life. However, despite the upsides to a minor character’s first person perspective, we wouldn’t understand at all what Mrs. Mallard’s feelings were in such a trying time. As the doctor was said to have thought, we’d think she was deeply upset when she thought him dead, and that she was overjoyed when this turned out false, to the extent of a heart attack from such joy. With only an outsider’s point of view, we’d jump to the most naturally supported conclusions, but those wouldn’t be correct in the slightest. A first person perspective is too close of a view for this