A Fatal Euphoria: The Story of an Hour Essay Example

in the train crash, lest a less “tender” (Chopin 3) person takes the credit of doing so. Josephine seems to half-conceal half-relate the news, mentally foreseeing the conventional shocked silence from Louise, imploring her to open the door anticipating grief-stricken ailments; yet in all this concern, there is a persistent control each person wishes to have over the mythic frail female.Even the husband-wife relationship is an uneven scale of male dominance and female subservience. Mrs. Mallard ponders on the meaning of love in her feelings for her husband, then dismisses it in the face of the priceless freedom that came with the death of her husband.

The societal pressure on the Victorian woman, burdening her with inflexible virtues and morals makes Chopin’s questioning the inner reality of the woman’s complex mind and soul so interesting an effort.The widow is emblematic of the loss of male support (read control) and therefore a figure of pity. The way Mrs. Mallard closes the door and goes near the open window is symbolic of the restrictive society she lives in, her soul yearning for the escape route to the colors of the spring and summer.

It is Chopin’s iconoclastic observation which makes her view the relationships which form the foundation of the human society as symbiotic claims of rights and duties.There would be no powerful will bending her in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose private will upon a fellow creature. ” The exhilaration of the boundless liberty made her cry out, “Free! Body and soul free! ” (Chopin 4) The world outside her window seemed to beckon her with

new abandonment, a fresh spring life – the smell of rain, the azure spaces of the sky amidst the clouds, the litanies of peddlers, the joyous sounds of sparrows.Her erstwhile loud cries at her the death news drifted away into intermittent sobs, stemming more out of habit than emotion. Her young fair face mirrored her calm resolute strength, amidst the silent lines of repression, bespeaking the unequal equation the husband-wife had shared. The idea of free will and choice to live life without the constraints of spousal dominance seemed terrifying at first; she willed against such thought, but the power of the elation which warmed her entire being made her breathless at the vistas of freedom opened in front of her.

Kate Chopin comments on the figure emerging from the room as a “goddess of Victory” ( Chopin 5). It is an epiphanic moment of self- identity for the woman living ostensibly under the shadow of her male spouse. It was not as if her husband did not care for her. Yes, he did. Yet he controlled her within the bond of marriage as per the norms of patriarchal society they inhabited. His sudden death signified the end of her silent captivity.

Kate Chopin’s characterization of Louise Mallard goes against the grain of stereotypical depiction of woman.The author challenges the traditional notions of relationships while commenting on the world of the woman within than the usual persona she is endowed without. It is the author’s bold intention to present the ideal versus the real, the psychological versus the social, the private self versus the public image in this extraordinary story. The end of the tale is

a surprise conclusion – the return of the husband, alive, without knowing or expecting the riot of reactions at his entry.The irony is heavily underlined in the dramatic effect of death due to heart failure. While technically the last string of event ties up neatly with the opening line commenting on Mrs.

Mallard’s weak heart condition, there is a double irony Chopin presents in a powerful epithet at the end – “joy that kills”( Chopin 5). The apparent reason for Mrs. Mallard’s demise was the great sense of joy at her husband’s safe return, the strength of the surge of emotion which she couldn’t bear and thus collapsed to her death.Yet it is a secret of her soul, revealed only to the readers, the real reason for her heart failure – the heartbreaking end of her dreams of freedom and self-assertion. Again, it was minutes earlier that she had fervently prayed for a long life. Paradoxically her life is abruptly terminated, technically so to speak, within the hour.

Kate Chopin with her complex vision of life, especially her insight into the closeted space of the woman’s mind and soul often “portrayed women who seek spiritual and sexual freedom amid the restrictive mores of nineteenth-century Southern society.She belongs to the early genre of American women writers who paved the way for feministic works. In fact, according to Susan Cahill, it is no error to see these fictions as feminism’s sacred texts, their authors as the movement’s greatest prophets, for they tell us more about what it feels like to be a woman than all the gray abstractions about Women…”. Her message about the contradiction between the

interpreted reality and the actual truth comes across strongly in the short story “ The Story of an Hour”.