Joy That Kills

Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" is hilariously ironic. Is it bad that I laughed out loud at the end when Mrs. Mallard died? Maybe I'm just morbid. I always did enjoy Poe...At any rate, I enjoyed this little gem of a short story. In fact, I enjoy most of Chopin's stories. Who doesn't like to read a good "stick it to the man" story every now and then? "The Story of an Hour" was particularly interesting because it provided insight into the mind of the "supposed" widow, Mrs. Mallard whose transition between grief and epiphany is both unexpected and tragic.


Like in many of her other works, Chopin focuses on the freedom and beauty of womanhood. This story reminded me of "The Awakening" in the sense that the main character is a woman who realizes her potential to live freely outside the bonds of matrimony. When Mrs. Mallard first discovers that her husband has died, she "wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms." This reaction would have been expected. Then, the distraught Mrs. Mallard isolates herself in her room in an effort to seek solitude. Once alone, a myriad of thoughts come rushing through her mind. Eventually, Mrs. Mallard ponders upon the idea of her lonely future. She thinks of the corpse of her dead husband and imagines seeing his "tender" hands that were a symbol of his dominance over her. She soon realizes that the rest of her days are hers and hers alone. The newfound sense of freedom excites her like a drug and fuels her imagination. She begins to fill her mind with hope to carry out unfulfilled dreams and to really live as she never had been able before. Her sudden grief has now transformed to ecstasy. Her liberation from the "mind-forged manacles" is complete.

When Mrs. Mallard's freedom is all of the sudden stripped from her grasp at the arrival of her husband, she lets out a scream and dies. It was as if she had won her very soul over the course of the "Hour" and then had it ripped out of her very being by the man that did nothing but loved her.

Chopin was able to capture the inner aspirations of many Victorian women. Undoubtedly, many women of the era felt oppressed by the expectations of society and the demands of their husbands. "The Story of an Hour" is able to quickly relate women's inner struggle between what was expected of them and what was secretly hoped for. Unfortunately for Mrs. Mallard, her sudden and brutal loss of freedom proved fatal.