Kate Chopin's Expression of True Marriage in 'The Story Of An Hour'

Was your marriage after you said “I do” different ? Was it the opposite of what you were expecting it to be ? Kate Chopin in the passage of 'The Story Of An Hour' is expressing that marriage is not as beautiful as people make it look or sound. It also shows that In Kate Chopin’s time you were not allowed to choose who you want to marry , you had to marry the person that best fits you financially, it didn’t matter if you were in love or not. Kate Chopin writes this story to let readers get a good picture on how things can affect you and make your heart very ill. Something very important was told in this story and it had a great effect on a lady named mrs.Mallard, she feels grief, freedom, then sad once again. In other words, Kate Chopin’s idea of marriage , is not always what you think your getting yourself into. Her use of irony, imagery, and diction help to convey this idea of marriage.

When Kate Chopin hears the news about her husband she suddenly feels grief.She has great pain from hearing about her husband's death. Kate Chopin says 'she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sisters arm”. In this quote you can see how Kate Chopin cries and how she abandons herself from the news. She also sits alone in a room and looks out the window where she is “pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and reached into her soul”. This shows that physically the death is making her tired which also affects her soul and is taking a toll on her. Kate Chopin’s diction helps the readers get a better understanding on what emotions Kate Chopin is feeling. She uses words like crying, faintly, motionless, and dull.

Kate Chopin suddenly changes tremendously she wants to sink this in her head. She suddenly begins to say “free, free, free!” These words show that she has opened her eyes to see that she can begin her a new life. Readers may think that from her saying this her marriage may have been bad, or that she wasn’t happy with her husband, or that she was locked down and couldn’t live her own life or how she wanted to live her life. The ways her eyes change from terror to them staying bright and keen shows a sign of relief and joy she feels. Kate Chopin states “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself'. This quote shows us that all along while being married Kate Chopin had no life of her own she was living her life for someone else. Now that she thinks her husband is dead she is free to do what she wants and likes to do. Now she can live her own live and start off fresh not having to worry about having someone stop her, she doesn’t have to worry about what others think or say.

Kate Chopin acted like an emotional rollercoaster which may had caused to her death. At first she was mourning about the death of her husband that she sometimes loved but often she didn’t. Then she had a change of heart about being sad because reality sunk in and she knew she was free. All of a sudden at the end of the story when her sister comes to her room she breaks down again. She then gets astonished from seeing her husband who was supposed to be dead coming in the house. As it was said in the beginning of the story Kate Chopin was afflicted with heart problems. All the emotions that crossed her mind and ran through her body made it even worse and was the cause of her dying because of her heart disease. In the end I saw that being in a marriage that you are not happy in can break you, but once something bad comes along you may have many emotions.

In conclusion, Kate Chopin's main purpose was to show readers that Kate Chopin could have embarked on a life of freedom that she didn’t see coming to her. Unfortunately she doesn’t get that chance because her freedom soon dies.