“Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death” (Chopin 177). From the first line forward, Chopin is able to create a mysterious and changing image of the main character Mrs. Mallard. By using the vague description of heart troubles, the author leaves room to ponder and derive different meanings from the seemingly simple phrase. Could Mrs. Mallard have a physical ailment that limits her ability to handle issues, or perhaps she is suffering emotionally from an outside source that has not yet been introduced into the story? Since Chopin never specifies the trouble, interest is kept on the subject, and focus is drawn to the different stresses the main character is faced with.

Through “veiled hints that revealed in h

Once upstairs Mrs. Mallard closes the door, and by doing so symbolically shuts out her old life. In the room “there stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair” (Chopin 177). Mrs. Mallard sinks into the armchair, and is enveloped in thoughts of her new life. She is able to breathe easier now that there is an open window in front of her, and she grows more and more comfortable in the roomy armchair, and “into this she sank […]” (Chopin 177). She sits with her head resting on the cushion, but still feels “pressed down by physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul” (Chopin 177). Despite the fact that she possesses a new found freedom, Mrs. Mallard seems to be tormented by past memories, for “she had loved him—sometimes” (Chopin 178), but she also wants to celebrate her freedom, for 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” (Chopin 178). Through phrases such as these the author helps relay the time period the story takes place in. The strong feminist undertone and sense of undeveloped talent, even noted when describing the character’s “ […] fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength […]” (Chopin 177), seem to date the piece to the early 1900’s or late 1800’s, to a time where change was inevitable for survival.

As Mrs. Mallard sits experiencing her newly attained freedom, “her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body,” (Chopin 178) her fragile heart oddly enough does not trouble her any longer since she is the ruler of her own person. She knew she would mourn again when she “saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and d

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