The Story of An Hour

Kate Chopin tells a fairly simple tale of a woman who has lost her husband in a train accident. She has strange, mixed feelings throughout the process of her grieving and is never quite sure what to make of it. The author makes good use of this and turns it into interesting diction and dialect. It has an eerie feel to it, as would it actually if you were there. I will go over these things and try to explain them in detail for your better understanding.

When the woman (Mrs. Mallard) was first informed of her husband’s death, she immediately started weeping. She didn’t go into a state of shock or utter disbelieve as most people would upon receiving this kind of news. She went directly into her room after that and stayed in there alone. This shows that she already had different feelings than others might have and that she might not have wanted anybody to see this and get suspicious. This appeals to the audience’s ethos because of how she acts and how it could make the viewer feel and/or think about her. The way that Chopin describes that exhaustion “haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul” makes it seem very eerie and like there is something more that you want to know to better understand this feeling.

Mrs. Mallard would sit by herself in an armchair staring outside of the window at the tree tops and roofs of houses. When the weeping subsided, the author describes a different sensation coming over her. She feels like it is going against her will and that she is “powerless to beat it back with her will.” Chopin helped push the audience’s thoughts along with curiously by stating that one word was uttered out of her mouth. “Free, free, free!” Then it was followed by how she had a “vacant stare and look of terror in her eyes” which implies that she was surprised to have these feelings a well as anybody else observing this would be.

Why did Mrs. Mallard think this way? What made her think that she was “free”? Appealing to the viewer’s pathos, by describing how she is released by any kind of physical or spiritual bond that they may have shared in the physical world, makes them feel attached to the story in some ways. Those ways may be from personal experience or knowing of somebody that has dealt with something similar in the past or even going through this right now.

Now getting to a big part of the story, “the joy that kills.” This could be taken many different ways. In this case, the author describes it by showing that the woman has been hurt, discouraged, and ultimately overcome her feelings of sudden terror. She has become somewhat satisfied with what the rest of her life is going to be. When she suddenly and unsuspectingly sees her husband come in through the door, she is sudden awe and shock that (due to her preexisting heart condition) she had a heart attack. She was so joyous to see her husband alive, but yet everything she had been thinking about and looking forward to had been crushed at the very instant. It was a big blow that was too much Mrs. Mallard to handle, as Chopin describes.

All in all, the “joy that kills” seems to be some what of bitter-sweet type of phenomena. It is a sudden rush of joy and pain all at the same time that one’s mind and body might not have the complexity to handle. These types of things must be lead into a bit more slowly. Kate Chopin describes it in ways that are vivid and strong appealers to pathos and even ethos. The mood of the scene makes people have sympathy, empathy, and even sadness and/or anger (pathos). But the way that she reacts, thinks and what she says (ethos) allows people to see a new perspective and side of the story that many people may not even recognize on their own.