"The Story of an Hour" is about a woman who finds the liberation to live for.
Kate Chopin's main character, Louise Mallard, is an.
ordinary housewife who has a heart condition. When her husband dies in a train wreck,.
her sister Josephine and her husband's friend Richards rush to her to break the news as.
gently as possible. When the news is broken to Louise, she immediately burst into tears.
and clutches her sister. After Louise calms down, she goes to her room to be by herself.
She is still very upset, sobbing every now and then, but as she looks through the window,.
she is disturbed by her feelings, "this thing that was approaching to possess her"(Trotter.
150). She is beginning to feel the freedom of being able "to live for herself"(Trotter 153).
instead of her husband. She tries to reject this feeling at first, but then starts to give into it.
until it is a "monstrous joy"(Trotter 156) that consumes her. When she finally leaves the.
room in triumph, she finds out that her husband is alive. She dies from the shock of.
finding out her husband is alive. The doctor ironically said, "she died from the grief that.
kills."(Chopin 446).
Kate Chopin is known for writing controversial works in a time when they were.
not accepted. In that sense this story is very comparable to her other works. Her.
characters are always commits sins that often made her contemperaries cringe, whether.
reading private mail (Elizabeth Stock's One Story"), deceiving well-meaning nuns.
("Lilacs), smoking illicit hallucinogenic ciggarettes ("An Egyptian Ciggarette"),.
condoning murder (The Godmother") or rejoicing at a husband's death ("Story of an.
Hour"). Kate Chopin foreshadows Louise's strange feelings about her husband's death.
right from the start. Chopin writes, "she did not hear the story as many women have.
heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once,.
with sudden, wild abandonment in her sister's arms.