You can find the full story here. Be sure to have finished reading the story before Wednesday’s class, to have written a reading response to it, and to have a copy of it with you.
After reading the story, you might look at this page about “The Story of an Hour.” Does this offer you any helpful information about the story or its author? Note that this page is part of the official Kate Chopin website–what does that tell us about its accuracy or authority?
The story of an hour as best as i can summarize is about a woman with heart problems who at the time learns of her husbands death. Her sister lets her know in a way that doesn’t come to her as a shock with out having to inflict pain on her already broken heart. The woman senses it from her sisters signal and weeps to herself. At the end of the story, it comes to me as a surprise but not only me but the woman herself for she died at the moment she realized her husband in fact had not died. She was so relieved and shocked at the sight of her husband that she died. In my opinion, she had been through so much in that hour that her heart could not possible endure at the time. In the end she was died of joy and that along with every other tension she felt earlier had killed her.
This was a great summary thoroughly explaining the story and it’s impact on you do you think this story kind of relates to “Trifle” by Susan Glaspell in which the female killed her husband and how Mrs. Mallard killed her husband in her mind? It was a pretty shocking ending to.
As I began to read “The Story of an hour” by Kate Chopin I was immediately worried and had a heart for the character Mrs. Mallard for her heart problems. It had the feeling of a young teen off to war then high ranked army men return to a mother’s door triangular folded flag in hand breaking the depressing news, something from the movies. Then her sister delivering the news to Mrs. Mallard made the news extremely believable. Also there was the incident with the train in which immediately made me think of Eagle Eye, Hancock and Pelham 123 movies dealing with trains that affected characters lives in the movies drastically. The third paragraph she felt a feeling of “wild abandonment” then “went away to her room alone,” she felt abandoned then left the ones that were comforting her to put herself in complete abondonment. In the fifth paragraph the mention of “rain” made me reflect on sad, gloomy, depressing days but life is still beginning anew around her because it’s spring. It had a really ironic conclusion being overjoyed and her dying in a Romeo & Juliet sort of way that when her lover was pronounced dead she had to die also but the lover didn’t die and come to realize his lover dies, you know it’s like a twist of fate.
Mrs. Mallard was a woman who had heart problems. She received word that her husband was killed in an accident. She learns this news as gently as possible from her sister Josephine, who heard it from the husband’s friend Richards. Richards heard the news when he received a telegram in a newspaper office describing a terrible accident involving the railroad. When Brently Mallards name was on the telegram of people that where killed. Richards who wanted to be certain that Brently was dead, waited for a second telegram that would prove it. Mrs. Mallard had a very sad reaction to the news of her husband’s death. She cried a lot like a person who has felt like they just lost everything. She tries to get back the hope and joy she had earlier in the day but it just isn’t there. As it turns out Brently Mallard did not die in the accident. But it was too late because Mrs. Mallard did die that die from her heart disease.
In this story Mrs. Mallard may have been in an unloving relationship, he didn’t feel love from her, “the face that had never looked saved with love upon her,” (67). But she saw beyond her bitterness and thought of the years to come in her life and received everyone with open arms at the wake. The story goes on to say that she would have no one to live for but her self. “there would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it that brief moment of illumination.” And yet she loved him —sometimes. Often she had not.” (67).
In my opinion, she loved him unconditionally when he was alive, but when he died she felt a sense of freedom from a relationship where she felt no love. The reason why she died was probably out of true loneliness. She seemed like a person who stood in her marriage regardless of the circumstances and in her eyes lost her one and only true love.
“The Story of an Hour” is a short story about Mrs. Mallard’s reaction to hearing about her husband’s death due to a railroad accident. Her husband’s friend Richards and her sister Josephine broke the news slowly to her because she had heart troubles. Mrs. Mallard immediately wept with grief and went to her room where she calmed down. During this time, she realizes that she didn’t really love her husband and can finally live the rest of her life for herself and no one else. Mrs. Mallard is so overwhelmed by joy that she keeps saying that she is free – “body and soul free.” I think this shows that she was really unhappy with her marriage to Brently Mallard because a woman who just lost her husband would normally be grieving, not feeling joyous. When Mrs. Mallard and her sister come downstairs, Brently walks through the front door and apparently wasn’t near the train wreck at all. Mrs. Mallard “died of heart disease – of joy that kills.” I think the reason she died was because after she spent some time absorbing the news of her husband’s death, she was so happy about living the rest of her life for herself that seeing Brently alive shocked her badly enough to kill her.
In the story, the narrator reflects a negative view of marriage and repression of women who live in a society which dominated by men. The narrator use a lot of vibrant and lively words to describe the setting and how Mr. Mallard’s emotion statues change from grief of abandonment of her dead husband to “opened and spreader her arms out them in welcome” . In my opinion, I like the way that narrator describe the images of the new spring life outside of the window to collates the world inside of her mind which fulfill with colors and hopes. And how she enjoy the moment that she believe her newfound life has come and her body and soul belong to her absolutely since her husband who she only loved him “sometimes” is gone. Unfortunately the joy of the freedom only last less than a hour, because she instantly died when she saw her dead husband walks in the door unexpected. I started to wondering who killed her.
In the story of an hour by Kate Chopin is about the alleged death of Brently Mallard that cause the death of his wife, who had heart problem. It happen a fatal train accident were many people were killed and Mr. Mallard came up in the list of death. Josephine (the sister of Mrs. Mallard) and Raymond (a friend of his husband) were whose told Mrs. Mallard allegedly happen to his husband death. At first she felt really bad about it, but then her feeling change and she was kind of happy. It seems that in the couple there were not true loved between them. At the end Mrs. Mallard die because of her heart problem.