The Story of An Hour - Chopin

Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour" is a flash fiction equivalent of an intellectual and emotional complex. We remember the definition from Ezra Pound's discussion of the 'image.' Chopin characterizes Mrs. Mallard as a feminist who has longed to be free from the "criminal" imposition of a man's will upon her own. The emotions she feels span a wide range. The grief she feels upon learning of her beloved husband's death gives way to the "illumination" that she is now free to live her life as she chooses. But her transcendent joy at discovering a new self is short-lived indeed, lasting about an hour, before she is plunged into despair by the sudden reappearance of Mr. Mallard, and dies from the shock. The character's focalization is internal, i.e. Mrs. Mallard and the reader know more than the other characters in the story (Richards, a friend; Mr. Mallard; Josephine, her sister; the doctor), who mistakenly attribute her death to the "joy" of seeing her husband alive again, rather than to a desperate attempt to escape her fate. The realism of her death--her heart gives way--saves appearances. Her respectability as a wife and mother remains intact in the Victorian society that remembers her.