By listening to the newscast of Brantley Mallard’s disastrous railroad accident that causes his death in the newspaper workplace, his friend Richards hurries towards the Mallards’ home, where he and Mrs. Mallard’s sister Josephine softly notify the weak-hearted Mrs. Mallard of Brantley’s passing. In reply, Louise Mallard starts weeping amenably before he goes to be seated alone in her apartment.
Tired, Mrs. Mallard is seated motionlessly in her armchair by the opening and looks at all the loveliness of the external world, rarely crying. She is energetic and young, with a peaceful and robust face, but she gapes boringly into the atmosphere while she is waiting eagerly for a revelation. Finally, she understands, despite her early hostility, that she is currently free. Terror leaves her eyes while her pulse is beating more rapidly.
Mrs. Mallard recognizes that she will grieve her affectionate husband’s passing, but she also forecasts numerous years of independence, which she greets. She initiates preparing for her future, in which she will live without a load of other people. She loves her husband, more or less, but affection is nothing to her when it is linked to freedom, she chooses, as she mumbles, “Free! Body and soul free!”
Josephine inquires Mrs. Mallard to permit her entrance since she is frightened that the inconsolable widow will make herself ill, but Mrs. Mallard visualizes the contentment of the years onward. Indeed, only the day earlier, she had dreaded living a prolonged existence. Victoriously, she responds to the door and moves downstairs with her support about Josephine’s midriff, whom Richards anticipates.
At this instant, Brantley Mallard emanates in the main entrance, taking nowhere close to the train tragedy. Richards went in front of him to hide him from sighting his wife when she cried out. By the time the physicians reached, she had suffered from heart disease, supposedly from the happiness that kills.
Mrs. Mallard’s explanation is complex because of the brief environment of her sorrow about her husband, as it may designate extreme selfishness or brazen self-absorption. However, Chopin does greatly distract us from understanding the story in this way, and indeed, Mrs. Mallard’s adaptation to momentary euphoria may just propose that the humanoid requires for freedom can surpass even marriage and love. Particularly, Louise Mallard reaches towards her closing with the evocative assistance of the setting, the descriptions of which emblematically connect Louise’s isolation arising with the commencement of her lifespan in the springtime. Paradoxically, in one logic, she does not pick her new thoughtfulness but instead obtains it from her environs, tiptoeing out of the atmosphere. The term mallard is an expression of a carving of a duck, and it might well be that desolate birds in the story represent liberty (“The Story of an Hour”).
To merge the story in a dominant melody, Chopin together instigates and ends with a declaration around Louise Mallard’s heart anxiety, which results in both a mental and a physical element. At the beginning of “The Story of an Hour,” Chopin uses the word “heart trouble” mainly in medicinal meanings, but with the progression of the story, Mrs. Mallard’s supposed infirmity appears to be mostly an outcome of mental suppression slightly more than really physical aspects. The story accomplishes this by ascribing Mrs. Mallard’s passing to heart disease, whereas heart disease is “the joy that kills.” This last expression is decisively caustic, as Louise should have sensed both happiness and life-threatening distress at Brantley’s arrival, re-gaining her husband and all of the loss of liberty her wedding needs. The line inaugurates that Louise’s heart situation is further of a symbol for her expressive state than a medicinal realism(“The Story of an Hour”).
Works Cited
“The Story of an Hour.” N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Sept. 2017.
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