Anthology Part 2 - The Story of an Hour

Prose arc and viewpoint

Read the complete story below, then follow the movement from public news to private experience and back again. The line numbers identify the same source lines throughout this lesson.

The Story of an Hour

By Kate Chopin

[1] Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to
[2] break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.

[3] It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed
[4] in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who
[5] had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received,
[6] with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to
[7] assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less
[8] careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

[9] She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed
[10] inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in
[11] her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room
[12] alone. She would have no one follow her.

[13] There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank,
[14] pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into
[15] her soul.

[16] She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver
[17] with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a
[18] peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing
[19] reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

[20] There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met
[21] and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

[22] She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless,
[23] except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself
[24] to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

[25] She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a
[26] certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away
[27] off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but
[28] rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

[29] There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it?
[30] She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of
[31] the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

[32] Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing
[33] that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--
[34] as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.

[35] When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She
[36] said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look
[37] of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her
[38] pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

[39] She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and
[40] exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.

[41] She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in
[42] death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead.
[43] But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would
[44] belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
[45] There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself.
[46] There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men
[47] and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A
[48] kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon
[49] it in that brief moment of illumination.

[50] And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What
[51] could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-
[52] assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

[53] "Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

[54] Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for
[55] admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What
[56] are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."

[57] "Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life
[58] through that open window.

[59] Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer
[60] days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life
[61] might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be
[62] long.

[63] She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a
[64] feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of
[65] Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards
[66] stood waiting for them at the bottom.

[67] Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who
[68] entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had
[69] been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He
[70] stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from
[71] the view of his wife.

[72] But Richards was too late.

[73] When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.

Vocabulary for reading

• Focalisation means the perspective through which a scene is perceived.
• Elixir means a substance believed to restore life or health.
• Importunities are persistent requests; a grip-sack is a small travelling bag.

This is prose short fiction. Its paragraphs carry a third-person narrative through a tightly compressed sequence. The title directs attention to the extraordinary amount of inward change packed into roughly one hour.

Before analysing a choice, secure what changes:

Who tells, who perceives, who knows?

The writer is Kate Chopin. The narrator is the constructed third-person voice that tells the story. Louise does not narrate it herself.

Focalisation asks whose perception organises what is presented. The answer can change even when the narrator stays in the third person.

This shifting distance matters more than the label alone. If Louise narrated in the first person, her private interpretation would be stated directly. Chopin instead lets it emerge within a third-person frame, so readers remain close to Louise while noticing that her vision is intense, sudden and not available to anyone else.

Freedom through setting and body

Louise's first response is genuine grief: she weeps immediately and withdraws only after its first force has passed. The room sequence does not erase that grief. It lets another response emerge beside it, making her experience complicated rather than cold.

From enclosure to perception

Louise sits inside the house, but the chair faces an open window. That position creates a threshold: she has not left her circumstances, yet her attention can move beyond them. Through her focalised perception, the view gathers movement, sound, scent and space:

• the trees carry new spring life;
• rain leaves a fresh smell;
• a distant song and street seller reach her;
• sparrows move in the eaves;
• patches of blue interrupt piled clouds.

It is tempting to stop at spring symbolises hope. That is too general. Here, signs of renewal arrive directly after a report of death, and they are perceived from inside a private room. Their position makes the outside world seem newly available to Louise before she consciously understands why.

The window is therefore both hopeful and limited. It offers a view, not an exit. This supports two compatible ideas: Louise experiences a vivid opening towards possibility, but that possibility still exists within a bounded, temporary hour.

The body registers the change

Chopin makes the recognition bodily as well as intellectual. Early in the room sequence Louise is exhausted, still and shaken by recurring sobs. Her breathing becomes tumultuous while she is still resisting the unnamed feeling (lines 32–34). The whispered repetition free, free, free! then names it (lines 35–36); the brightened eyes, quick pulse and bodily warmth follow (lines 37–38). The physical changes surround the act of naming, showing both its struggle and its release.

That order is significant:

1. the world outside appears active;
2. Louise senses an unnamed change;
3. her breathing and resistance reveal a bodily struggle;
4. language names freedom;
5. her eyes and blood register release, and she imagines a future she can welcome.

The repetition is not valuable merely because it is repetition. The same word returning three times shows a difficult recognition becoming insistent. Its whispered delivery also preserves the difference between Louise's private truth and the household's public assumptions.

An expert evidence decision

Suppose the focus is: How does Chopin present Louise's changing sense of freedom?

• afflicted with a heart trouble is useful for the opening and ending, but by itself it does not show freedom developing.
• open window is a promising turning-point reference, but the window symbolises freedom would leave the sensory sequence and narrative position unexplained.
• Pairing open window with free, free, free! is more productive: the first locates possibility in Louise's perception; the second shows that possibility becoming conscious language.

A precise analysis follows the movement rather than assigning a fixed effect:

Freedom first exists as something Louise can sense beyond the room. She struggles bodily against it before naming it in the repeated word; afterwards, her brightened eyes and warm blood make the recognition feel like release. Chopin therefore presents self-recognition as a process, while the closed room keeps it private from Josephine.

The whole-text check comes next: Brently's return closes down the future that the window seemed to open. The setting pattern gains force because the ending makes its promise temporary.

Marriage, selfhood and ambiguity

The story's treatment of marriage depends on a difficult contrast. Louise imagines independence from Brently, but the narrator does not present him as a simple villain.