Symbolism In The Story Of An Hour, By Kate Chopin

In “The Story of an Hour”, Chopin, through symbolism and plot development, dramatically but profoundly heightens the experience of an hour of life in order to reveal the impermanence of life and underline the restricted, subjected role of women in society. The story begins with two people contemplating the contending fear of effecting Mrs. Mallard’s fragile health and the need to relay the news of her husband’s death. The explanation of this delicate situation, tight-roping between two evils, successfully grabs the readers’ attention and lays the premise of the story. Mrs. Mallard receives the fateful news from her sister and her husband’s friend—Richards, and both of them try to calmly indicate the news to Mrs. Mallard with broken
The chasm between a woman’s role of dutifully following socially correct behavior and stifling individual freedom is apparent through Chopin’s use of Mrs. Mallard’s outer and inner self. After Mrs. Mallard “wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms” to show her outward behavior, Chopin creates an opportunity for her to express her inner thoughts and aspirations, “when the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone […] the tops of trees that were all quiver with the new spring life […] blue sky showing here and there through
Though Mrs. Mallard appropriately expresses her sadness with her husband’s death in “public”, her independent self was gradually released from the long-term of living under a male dominated society, which is embodied by her husband. Richards brought the bad news to Mrs. Mallard in a hurried fashion, but he also gave an hour of private time for Mrs. Mallard to rearrange her self-consciousness, “Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul” (13). Her husband’s death releases her soul from a form of constant toil and restriction that was present in the outside world, represented by her physical body. Additionally, it is normal for a woman who loses her husband to seek others’ help, but Mrs. Mallard chooses to lock herself inside the room, which illustrates the sense that she needed time to reconcile the difference between her outer behavior and inner joy. The door of the room symbolizes the two different living styles—outside of the door, Mrs. Mallard had to express her feeling of sadness because of the acceptable standards of mourning a loved one, but inside the door, she could forget everything that chained her from her own, independent future. Her body, feelings, and consciousness were free only when she stepped behind the