English lang weekly writing #1

Short story - The story of an hour - Kate Chopin 
Click here to read the story
In the story of an hour, Josephine and Richard hear that Brentley Mallard has died in a train accident, and have to gently break the news to Louis Mallard, his wife. The instant she hears of his passing she cries and goes to her room in grief, but she realizes now her husband has died she is no longer held back by him and she starts to look forward to her new independent life. She goes downstairs with her sister Josephine when the doorbell rings and to her shock its Brentley, her husband, who had been far away from the scene at the time of the accident and did not know there even had been an accident. Louis has a heart attack and dies at the sight of her husband, supposedly dead, at her doorstep.

Louis is portrayed as different from other women."She did not hear the story as many would have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment." This shows that Louis is more open emotionally than the conserved, uptight women that were the social standard in that time. It conveys the image of a more independent, confident woman.

When Louis goes to her room, swept up in a whirlwind of emotions, she cries and is depressed about her husband's passing but then she realizes she is now no longer held back by another person. "She said it over and over again under the breath. "Free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes." This quote shows her realization of the freedom she has been granted by her husband's death, which is not something most women would feel when their husband dies, but Louis also knows "that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death", but "she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely". This could show her maturity in her positive way of thinking, looking on the bright side of her husband's death by realizing her new found in dependency, although it is a bit sadistic to find joy in the death of a loved one. But this could be because in the time this story was written women were not seen as equal to men, and would have to be obedient to their husband and refrain from speaking their own opinion or doing what their husbands disliked.

When she goes downstairs with her sister, embracing her fresh freedom, she sees her husband, who, surprising to everyone, was alive, Louis got a heart attack and died, possibly due to the shock and dismay of losing her so newly found happiness. "When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease - the joy that kills". The doctors and everyone else did not know she had been joyous about her husbands death. ""Go away. I am not ill" No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window." Her sister had been worried that Louis's isolating herself in her room because she was still in major depression when in fact she was anticipating her freedom. The doctors said her heart attack was due to the joy that kills, but as the readers know, she was happy about being widowed, so instead of dying out of the sheer happiness of seeing her husband alive, it was the sudden loss of her life dream, therefore the joy that was taken away from her killed her.