Story On An Hour

“The story on an hour”, A short story published by Kate Chopin In 1894. From the beginning, we as the readers are introduced to the protagonist’s health problem with her heart. Subsequently, her husband has just “passed away” in a railroad accident, and her sister wants to break to her the news as gently they can. So then, right after hearing that, Mrs. Mallard proceeds to feel “wild abandonment” (Chopin 428). That feeling quickly changed as she now began to feel a sense of relief and freedom because for once she finally felt independent. But until the end it is revealed that the husband’s death was not true as he actually walks into the house and causes Mrs. Mallard to fall to her death. The doctors claimed that it was the “joy that kills”
Upon his death, Chopin began to get more into writing, as she involved it more in her daily life. In accordance to that, we could relate Chopin’s situation to be similar to that of Mrs. Mallard, of course the comparison could be viewed as her ideology on Oscar's death, but Gunning mentioned how Chopin turned more into writing after she became a widow, therefore in my perspective the death of Mr. Mullard in “The story on an hour” could be Chopin's change in commitment towards writing as she described it in the story “There would be no one to live for her 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. A kind intention or a cruel intention make the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.” (Chopin 428) After all Chopin could finally commit herself to writing where she could freely express her views on the ideology on gender roles that they had at the time. But then “The story of an hour” proceeds to the part where Mrs. Mallard sees her husband (the reality) and dies. My interpretation of the protagonist’s death
But there are also critics that argue against it such as Lawrence I. Berkove who claims “there is a deeper level of irony in the story which regards Mallard as an immature egoist and a victim of her own extreme self-assertion” (Berkove 152) Berkove also claims that Mallard was sick both physically and emotionally as he tries to emphasize that there is an even deeper message that Chopin is trying to convey through her story. But I would completely disagree with Berkove’s claim that there is a deeper message, because it is clear through the evidence of Chopin’s writing that she kept her messages around the idea of feminism. To Conclude, I highly believe my ideas about the death of Mallard in the short story “The story of an hour” such as the real reason behind her death being a matter of disappointment when she saw her husband still alive and her heart condition playing a large role in that as well.
Also the belief that Kate Chopin related Mrs. Mallard’s death to her real writing career/life in the sense of “beginning a new life” as a writer and the return of Mrs. Mallard’s husband as the matter of all the critics that were against her writings which in this case she would use to express herself and her