Kate Chopin’s story “The Story of an Hour”, revolves around a marriage with an unusual, pathetic ending. It is about a tale of a girl who thought that the boy is dead causing her a deep struggle within herself. Eventually, the girl died due to her overwhelming joy from her partner’s fake death. Suprisingly, Kate Chopin used many symbolic representation about how the story flows. Maybe for others this symbols may mean something different from my stand point, but for me these symbols made the story a spicier one. It confused me at the start, but after numerous appreciation of the text, “The Story of an Hour” goes like this.
The story contains multiple imagery that describes hidden identities. From the beginning, as paragraph 3 said, “When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her. ” This line tells us that Louise also felt a bit of lonliness in her heart opposing the conclusion of the doctors telling, “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease–of the joy that kills. ” From this we can conclude that the girl is avoiding herself in accepting that her husband is dead already.
Maybe from the start she felt that sadness, but knowing the fact that she has a heart problem, she stepped out from the reality and tried an unusual way of celebrating her husband’s death. That time when she is still happy even though her husband is now at peace. The reality that has been provoked by Louise’s unccustomed activity. As the story progresses, the true status of the couple has been revealed. In traditional consensus, marriage is about a “two-way” love system between a couple of the opposite sex. As stated in the Catholic marriage vows, “I, (name), take you, (name), to be my husband/wife.
I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life. ” Perhaps it is evident that marriage is not about the material thing the couple has, but it’s about the unexplainable feeling and connection between the boy and the girl. In short it’s about love. Unfortunately in the story, Louise lived a miserable married life with his husband Brently. With these lines, “There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to each into her soul. ”(paragraph 4) and the line “Free! Body and soul free! “(paragraph 14) The first line reminds me of a feeling of peace and harmony inside her body. It feels like for a long time she missed that feeling of freedom, as the 2nd example says, from her husband. Having the fact that before, their culture is about getting a partner at a certain age so it means maybe Louise is only forced to marry Brently. She is obligated to do her responsibilities as a wife but it violates the tradition of marriage is love not the thing you can do.
Also from this line, “But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome. ”(paragraph 13), we can say that she is embracing the new life from a laconic life she has before. So therefore we can conclude, that Louise’s marriage to Brently is just a mandatory action to coincide with their culture but negates the more valuable aspect in life. That aspect is about loving wholeheartedly and not loving ending up in a catastrophe. Mrs. Louise Mallard died of joy as said by the doctors, but maybe she died with joy.
As I said on the third paragraph, the death of Brently and their marriage can be a happy event for her with some proofs along with it. As said in paragraph 19, “She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. ” This implicates that event though her husband was “dead”, she found a new life suprisingly after that “tragedic” event. She is not the traditional “crying lady” person on the funeral house. From this we can conclude that Brently’s fake death is not a loss but a triumphant to a new and fresh ending.
