I know it's a bit late and you guys have already done this but oh well..

I found this story really interesting. Chopin usually writes from a femminist point of view often challenging the ideals of marriage in the 19th Century. She does this in The Story of an Hour by exploring the confinements of marriage and the freedom that comes without.

Here we find a character who's just been told her huband is dead. Naturally she is then overcome by  "a storm of grief, " however what is interesting about this story is what follows..."monsterous joy." Now this struck me as a bit weird, most people don't experience joy when someone has just died. But Chopin goes on to explain how Mrs. Mallard felt trapped and stifled by her marriage, "And yet she had loved him-sometimes." This is typical of the feminist view that was emerging during the 19th century. Female characters were seen as trapped in marriages of arrangement...the concept of marrying someone for love what foriegn. Take for example Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Here it's similar. Although Mrs. Mallard feels grief and mourns for her husband, it's through his death that she finally realises the joy in being free, in being able to live for yourself.

Chopin describes the excitement of what is to come for Mrs. Mallard by writing, "She saw beyond that bitter moment, a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutey. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome."  This tells us that secretely she has been longing for independance for some time.

The absolute irony of this story is that when Mrs. Mallard discovers her husband is infact alive, she dies. Through her husbands death comes joy, yet through his return comes death. It's ironic here that it's assumed she died due to the joy of seeing her husband again but in actual fact I believe its the loss of freedom that kills her. Once having that taste of ultimate freedom, for it then to be taken away from you again is devastating. 

The last sentence really struck with me and sums up the whole story I think. 

"They said she had died of heart disease-of joy hat kills."


More to come after this...