The Story Of An Hour By Kate Chopin Plot and Analysis

 Woman craving for freedom was a popular topic during the 18th century. Kate Chopin was one of among female writers tend to be feminist, expressing her desire to be autonomous and independent. She has achieved recognition in the 20th century especially with her 1899 novel 'The Awakening'. In the Story of an hour, Kate Chopin introduces to us Mrs. Mallard (Louise) as she reacts to her husband’s death by the variety of the turmoils emotion from sadness to happiness. 

The story of an hour is one of her literature that gives me a strong impression about the development of stream consciousness of Mrs. Mallard throughout the story that reveals the cause of true death. Since hearing the news that Mr. Mallard’s death, she was crying and isolated herself in her room, which show her tiredness, try to escape and run away from reality. However, everything has changed when she stands in front of the window. (“There stood...in the eaves”) Through this passage, Kate Chopin shows us the changes Mrs. Mallard’s internal thought by a picture of the standing in front the open window, she notices everything surroundings: “the delicious breath of rain,” “the notes of a distant song,” “countless sparrows were twittering.” These individual elements of the natural environment are just happen in the springs time which is a symbol of rebirth. There are some potentials and possibility creep into her mind, color her own soul, she realized that even though her husband die but the world still moving its own just like the unstoppable clock. Her emotion dramatically changes which at first she is kind of hollowed out and empty, then she’s in a stupor. However, she takes the illustration of a husband like a chain that confined her for a long time but now it’s over.

 After the stumbling block broken, as she sits in her room and realized that freedom is waiting for her at the window. She is not immediately feeling happiness but she’s about to by this passage (“She was beginning....free, free, free!”) For the first time, she realized that one of the outcomes of her husband’s death is that she will now live for herself instead of living her husband. She sees her future and she sees the beauty it can, which show how the power of stream consciousness conquers the conservatism of society because there is no way which could gain freedom besides having thought that her husband died. She will not be repressed even in those subtle ways that can happen in a relationship, especially in a patriarchal culture, where a husband does have more authority than the women, is granted more power, more legal status than women. (Someone was opening...the joy that kills.) 

Nevertheless, her emotion dramatically changing led to her death when Mr. Mallard walks through the door. The doctors, as well as all family, believe that she died because of the heart attack. Does Mrs. Mallard adultery? and this is a reason that makes her unhappy when her husband comes back.

 However, in the view of the reader, we all now further than that which she die because of losing freedom. What she thought was for the beginning of new life now turning faded. Everything she imagines, hope for the future life is crashing in the air just the like somebody crashing her heart.