Story of an Hour

Essay by slwilkens99College, Undergraduate December 2014

download word file, 3 pages 0.0

Sherri L. Wilkens

English 102

Prof. Nashel

May 12, 2014

"The Story of an Hour"...Kate Chopin

In the short story "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin the narrator gives a vague description that Mrs. Mallard has heart trouble. She does not go into depth about it, but it is supposed to be the reason why she dies at the end of the story. When in reality she dies of never having the freedom that she yearned for. According to Bender, "Her understanding of the meaning of love and courtship, in particular, was altered and became more pessimistic. This attitude finds its expression in The Story of an Hour when Mrs. Mallard questions the meaning of love and ultimately rejects it as meaningless.

I feel the significance of the story is that here we see a woman that suffers from heart trouble and is told that her husband that she loves was killed in a train accident.

Mrs. Mallard begins to sob after hearing the news and returns back to her bedroom to be alone with her grief. She sits by an open window and sees so many different things and she reflects on the things that will soon be that she is now free. Mrs. Mallard describes what she sees as she sits by the open window: "She could see in 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. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves. There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds...