English Literature

In  The Story of an Hour  author Kate Chopin provides a snippet of the experience of one woman experiencing the liberation of the end of her marriage. Believing her husband has died in a railroad accident, Louise Mallard, goes through a range of emotions from sadness and finally to joy.

Understanding that with the death of her husband she can now be free to live her own life, Louise not simply accepts but embraces her new role as widow. Chopins story is telling of her own life and experience, as well as her other works which embody a sense of female freedom. Though Chopins relationship with her own husband, Oscar Chopin, is viewed as having been a happy one ( Oscar Chopin, The Husband ) she nevertheless reflects a society that by and large placed the interests of the woman and wife as secondary to all others. Raised by women, Chopin was able to experience firsthand the strength and determination of women on their own ( Family Influence on Chopin ). Borrowed not from her own marital experience but her mothers, the railroad accident mirrors the death of Chopins own father who did in a railway accident when Kate was still a young girl ( Kate Chopin Biography ).

Though we cannot expect that for Chopin this would have been the freeing occasion it was for Louise Mallard, or for that matter freeing for Chopins mother, the death of a patriarch still has the effect of rearranging the small society of women who relied on such a man. In  The Story of an Hour  death is liberation as seen firsthand through the eyes of the narrator Mr. Mallards presumed death frees Louise Mallard from the life of a wife and mother and allows her to reclaim her own destiny. Her own death at the discovery of his survival is equally freeing, allowing her to die as she had lived for a few precious moments.

The perspective from which the believed death of Mr. Mallard is presented is very important in the overall presentation of the story. Told through a third person narration, we are able to objectively observe and understand the full range of emotions that play through the short remainder of Louise Mallards life. From grief at the upheaval of her life and finally radiant joy at the same, Louises range of emotion illustrates how profound a change Mallards death will have on his widow. With her change in status, the rules had changed and the rest of her life  would belong to her absolutely  (Chopin). The objective views also allows the reader to see the life still surrounding Louise, from the view of the street to the physical and psychological wear of marriage,  She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength  (Chopin). Marriage has not allowed Louise to be her true self, to even explore what self remained beneath the surface of her acceptance of such a fate. Though her husband has not been cruel and  she had loved him   sometimes. Often she had not  (Chopin), her jubilation at his death illustrates the stifling nature of a relationship which had gone dry almost from the beginning.

Until the moment of his presumed death Louise has kept her own needs in the background, now with his death she can finally  live for herself  (Chopin). Perhaps, given her own largely happy and free marriage to Oscar, Chopin is doubly aware of the repressive nature of societys attitudes toward marriage. After Oscars death Chopin herself, whether for the same reasons as Louise or from grief, never remarried though she was widowed in her early thirties (Kate Chopin Biography). Louises physical death at the discovery her husband is not dead is indicative of the death of her spirit as she can no longer live acceptingly the constricting role of wife, having tasted the joy of freedom.

Louise Mallards brief moments of widowhood and her eventual death are the only acceptable freedom for women of Chopins day. With Mr. Mallards death, the rules of the society that governed Louises life changed, allowing her to live beyond the expectations of a wife and to more fully embrace herself. On his return, the shock of being thrown back into such an existence is too much and her heart stops, not from joy as Chopin almost sarcastically states in her conclusion but in resignation. With both of them alive, Louise will never be able to find and live for herself. She will be forced into the role of wife and like a prisoner set free, the idea of being behind the bars once more is unbearable and death is the only release. Though the rules that govern marriage have since changed in the time preceding Chopins story, the idea of knowing oneself is still relevant. Human beings search for their own identity, within social practices, loved ones, and experience. There is a universality in the freedom of Louises discovery, where she throws away all of the identifying factors of society to within herself. Her death is not weakness but instead a kind of unknowable choice at the heart of the human condition. Even today, the idea of finding oneself is relevant and lives on. Marriage may not be what it once was but people still have the desire to own themselves and their own lives.