Story Of An Hour Literary Analysis

Aristotle once wisely said, “Happiness depends upon ourselves.” However, having to provide for your own happiness is difficult to do, and hard to maintain. Kate Chopin’s short story, The Story of an Hour introduces a character that shows just that. When the protagonist, Mrs. Louise Mallard learns of her husband’s death, she is devastated at first, but then feels a strange sense of relief. She realizes that she can live the life that she wants for herself, and be who she wants to be. Knowing her aforementioned heart troubles, she visualized her husband, Brently, walking through the front door and died of a heart attack. She thought that she could take advantage of the new opportunity that was presented for her with joy, but the guilt from being
so happy killed her. An examination of a dynamic character like Mrs. Mallard from The Story of an Hour reveals a central theme that too much ambition leads to self-destruction. In the beginning of the story, Mrs. Louise Mallard learns that her husband, Brently had died in a trainwreck. Brently’s best friend, Richards had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster had been received. He had even checked twice just to make sure he was right. Knowing she is afflicted with heart trouble, Josephine and Richards wanted to break the news as gently as possible to her. Nevertheless, Louise was devastated. “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance...When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room” (3). Mrs. Mallard didn’t take her husband’s death as most women would: she felt an immediate wave of grief wash over her. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She locked herself in her bedroom, away from her sister’s love and everyone else. “There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul” (4). When feeling such a significant amount of grief and sadness, extreme tiredness kicks in. Mrs. Mallard then started to realize how much her life was going to change. Towards the middle of the story, Mrs.
Mallard starts to go through this strange emotional state after she learns her husband died. She locks herself in her bedroom, and starts to take in all of her surroundings. “She could see the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air...There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window” (5-6). She was just so emotionally drained that all she could do was stare and focus on all of the beauty around her and not all of the ugliness of death that was radiating near her. As she was alone in her bedroom, the narrator explains that she starts to feel something approaching her. “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully...She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will - as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been” (9-10). Later on, she realizes that “thing” was relief. She could do as she wishes and finally admit that she didn’t love her husband as much as she thought she did. This is where the mood starts to change. It’s originally very depressing, but now it’s becoming much more happy. “There would be no one to live for during those coming years, 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...And yet she had loved him - sometimes. Often she had not” (13-14). It seems as though Mrs. Mallard was actually happy for once; but as mentioned before, making yourself happy is hard to
do. As the story starts to reach its conclusion, Mrs. Mallard sadly realizes that all endings can’t be happy. As she finally leaves her bedroom and walks outside to face her new life, she imagines her husband walking through the front door, uninjured as though the trainwreck never happened. “She clasped her sister’s waist, and together they descended down the stairs...(Someone) was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one” (19-20). Mrs. Mallard becomes fully aware of her internal conflict and realized the amount of guilt she’d have to face everyday if her husband had still been alive. And that fear killed her. “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills” (21). Now, Mrs. Mallard is not only a dynamic character, but a tragic one as well. Louise died from the guilt of being happy that her husband had died. In the end, Mrs. Mallard’s hope was destroyed by her fear. In conclusion, Mrs. Mallard’s character clearly demonstrates how one’s ambition can lead to self-destruction. During the rising action, Mrs. Mallard was devastated to hear that her husband had died. In the midst of the climax, she starts to realize that she was relieved, and she could live a better life without him. During the resolution, she looks back on how she’s been feeling and imagines her life if her husband hadn’t died in the trainwreck. She felt so guilty for being happy that her heart disease killed her. She tried to make her own happiness, and it just ended up killing her.