Women's Freedom in The Story of an Hour Essay

"The Story of an Hour," by Kate Chopin, illustrates women's struggle for freedom in the late 1800s. This particular story highlights one fictional woman's struggle for liberation despite the social expectations and limitations imposed on her and others of her gender while attempting to shed light on the social dilemmas of women during the male-dominated 19th century.

The protagonist of the story is Louise Mallard, a woman diagnosed with heart trouble who is unhappily married to Brently Mallard, a man with a "face that had never looked save with love upon her" (Chopin 296). Brently's close friend Richards discovers at the newspaper office news via telegram that Brently has been killed in a train wreck, which he checks twice for accuracy. The first hint at the time period in the story is the fact that Louise Mallard's husband was allegedly killed in a train accident, with the news reaching the newspaper office by telegram. In the 1800s, train wrecks were not uncommon, and telegrams were a popular form of communication (at least until) the invention of the telephone in 1876. Richards allows Louise's sister and caretaker Josephine to relay the information to Louise, who immediately storms off to her room after grieving "with sudden, wild abandonment" (Chopin 295). At this point in the story, Louise's true feelings are unknown to the reader, but upon re-examination this is an ironic situation given the fact that further reading proves Louise never cared much for her husband in the first place, so her wild grieving is opposite her feelings.

As Louise sits in her armchair and observes the spring scenery, she can hear a peddler in the streets "crying his wares" (Chopin 296), she can see "patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window" (Chopin 296), and she feels a strange, unidentifiable force approaching her. Since peddlers have seldom been seen "crying their wares" since the 19th century, one can only assume this reference further contributes to the setting and time of the story. The majority of the imagery and symbolism in "The Story of an Hour" is used in this paragraph alone. Chopin offers an innocuous description of rain clouds, but the meaning behind it is most likely showing how Louise is seeing emerging patterns of hope through the gloominess of her marriage to Brently. Shortly after Louise gazes over the clouds, she felt "something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully" (Chopin 296). Chopin elucidates, "What was it? She did not know. It was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her" (Chopin 296). The description of the encroaching force Louise encounters could be one of two things; Louise is either feeling ashamed at herself for partaking in the guilty pleasure of being happy that her husband died, or it could possibly be foreshadowing on Chopin's part in that Louise is battling her own harbinger of death. The former point is made credible by the fact that once this force "possesses" her, she chants "free, free, free!" (Chopin 296) and if this force were indeed death, she probably should have died on the spot (however, since she does perish at the end of the story, the idea that this force is an omen of her demise is not discredited). Another example of irony occurs when Louise comes to the full realization of her liberation--she does it privately, alone in her bedroom, behind closed doors.