The Story of an Hour

            
             Written by author, Kate Chopin, "The Story of an Hour" is a short story where an often unheard of view about marriage in presented. The main character, Mrs. Louise Mallard, experiences the exhilaration of freedom rather than the desolation of loneliness after she learns of her husband's death. Later, when Mrs. Mallard learns that her husband is not dead, she comes to realize that all hope of freedom for her is gone. The crushing disappointment then leads to Mrs. Mallard's own death. "The Story of an Hour" is a literary piece that suggests the idea of a marriage being a state of oppression and smothering rather than loving and open. .
             Though Chopin relates Mrs. Mallard's story, she does not do so in first person but rather through a narrator's voice. However, the narrator is not simply an observer. The narrator knows, for example, that Mrs. Mallard, for the most part, did not love her husband: ".she had loved him-sometimes. Often she had not"(257). It is obvious that the narrator knows more than can be physically observed. Chopin, however, never tells the reader what Mrs. Mallard is feeling. Instead, the reader must look into Mrs. Mallard's actions and words in order to understand what Mrs. Mallard feels. .
             During her marriage, it is apparent that Mrs. Mallard was held back from much of her ambitions in life: "She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression." (257). Through her appearance, Mrs. Mallard is seen as held back because there are no marks of adventure or thrill present across her face. When Mrs. Mallard learns of her husband's death, she begins to realize that there will "be no powerful will bending her." (257). There will be no husband who believes he has the ".right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature" (257). She realizes that her life is now hers to live and that she is free do anything and everything she ever wanted with out a man there to hold her down.