Story Of An Hour Literary Analysis

Communications 2
2/23/14
The Story of an Hour – Fiction Response “The Story of an Hour," by Kate Chopin, is a tale of a woman who is overjoyed by the death of her husband representing a negative view of marriage. Chopin creates both a detailed physical and psychological setting inside of Louise’s mind that envelopes the reader throughout the story. Everything about Louise’s life is described with minimal details and the slightest of enjoyment, while the inside of her mind and her dreams of the outside world are alive and full of excitement. The figurative diction and imagery used in the story illustrates a setting that allows the reader to experience Louise’s emotions as they fluctuate from numbness to jubilant. Many things throughout
“The Story of an Hour” hint or push towards the idea that marriage keeps Louise constrained and that she needs to be set free. In the story, Louise is diagnosed with a heart disease that doctors believe came from the joy of seeing her husband. However, the fact that Louise dies in the end of the story of this heart disease can be symbolic of the disease of marriage. The fact that the heart is used in this story as the sick body part is symbolic to show that this “disease” came from within Louise, not anything external. Kate Chopin uses bland and simple phrases like “And yet she loved him-sometimes. Often she did not,” when describing the way Louise feels about her husband and other things to show that much like the quote, her feelings were bland and simple, nothing special. When describing Louise’s emotions inside her dreams when she’s excited or thrilled, the story becomes lively and rich with colorful details.
This is completely opposite of how Louise’s feelings are described with regard to things in the story such as her emotional attachment to her husband. The quote “And yet she loved him-sometimes. Often she did not,” is used when describing her feelings towards her husband, but following this quote, the language begins to come alive along with Louise’s character. For example, “What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!” This quote comes alive with words like mystery and impulse and the use of exclamation points. Initially, the story starts out with short dinky phrases to portray Louise’s surrounding, but as soon as she begins to feel emotion, the sentences become long, detailed and full of excitement to contradict the previous
one. After hearing the news of her husband’s death, a paragraph begins with “There would be no one to live for in those coming years; she would live for herself”.
There are no words or details that bring the sentence to life, the sentence is merely fact and unemotional. Shortly after, Louise begins to once again come to life with sentences like “There will 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,” almost as if she realizes that she has no need to be sad, for marriage was just a disease holding her back. When talking about the fact that she had no one to live for, the sentences became full of energy and power with words like “powerful will” and “impose.” All of this power and strength in the sentences, only to be followed right back to a numb “And yet she loved
him—sometimes”. Through contrasting amounts of details and sentence structures, the reader is able to feel Louise’s emotions throughout the story. The reader is forced to ignore the outside world due to the lack of details and focus on Louise’s life inside her mind, full of lively descriptions that strengthen the idea of how depressing marriage can truly be.

Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. ""The Story of an Hour"" "The Story of an Hour" N.p., 1894. Web. 02 Mar. 2014. .