... express them is contradictory as well. She tries to repress the feeling of joy that is coming over her "striving to beat it back with her will- (171). The setting of the story is representative of Mrs. Mallard's contrary emotions. She receives the news of her husband's death in the house she shares with him. The house represents the boundaries that marriage has placed on Louise Mallard as well ... triumph in her eyes- (172). After her "possession of self-assertion- and "brief moment of illumination,"" Mrs. Mallard is portrayed as a "goddess of Victory- (172). The narrator does a disservic...

• Word Count: 1416
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

... she undergoes many changes of the way she looks at life and the way she wants to live the rest of hers. The staircase in the Mallard house, the open window in the bedroom, the blue sky breaking through the clouds, and the signs of new life seen and heard from the bedroom window are all signs of the new life Mrs. Mallard has been given. When the story opens, the characters are on the main floor of the Mallard household. Mrs ... person. As Louise and Josephine go back downstairs, they are returning back to Louise's old life. While they are walking down the stairs to return to the main flo...

• Word Count: 949
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... wanted to live her life without her husband. The setting of the story takes place in the season of spring, in a house. After receiving the news of her husband's death, Mrs. Mallard runs upstairs closing the door behind her. She is not sad, yet she is so happy. Happy to receive the news of her husband death. During that period of time in the late 1800's, women were only given freedom if their ... be her last day. Louis, while she was enjoy the glorious dreams of her future, is disturbed by knocks outsider her door. Josephine and Mrs. Mallard started to decent the stairs when suddenly, Mr...

• Word Count: 840
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... to her. Set in a time when women had already established themselves as a force within the arena of equal rights, she somehow lags far behind this quite modern era. Godwin's protagonist is not so much dissatisfied with the traditional role of mother, wife, caretaker and house keeper, but rather quite unhappy with the fact that she feels inadequate in this situation. While she lives a structured life and ... her activities are mostly confined to caring for her husband and child, she is obviously not satisfied with this. She is not so concerned with the social implications of the role, but...

• Word Count: 969
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... to live her life the way she wanted to in contrast to that of the way her husband wanted her to, "There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself (77). This would soon come to an abrupt end as Brently Mallard enters the house to see his wife descending down the stairs. "When the doctors came they said ... she had died of heart disease - of joy that kills ... (78). The irony arising from this is that while the doctors say she died of joy, the reader knows that she actually died because of the freedom which was stripped away instantaneously fro...

• Word Count: 4614
• Approx Pages: 18
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... opens the door and descends the stairs "like a goddess of Victory", suggesting that she conquered her marriage and is now celebrating. She is prepared to face her life with joy. Her mind is described as "running riot", relating the theme of a prisoner breaking free. The story takes another turn back to the original theme of imprisonment. While Louise is descending the stair, the supposedly deceased Mr. Brently Mallard walks into the house. Everyone ... is shocked, but the ... ...

• Word Count: 829
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... waiting for her. They descend down the stairs to find that Mr. Mallard was not dead after all. He had been far from the accident and was very alive. In the strangest twist of all Mrs. Mallard falls dead. The doctors said she dies of heart disease. It is amazing how our lives can change in the course of an hour. I wonder how the story would be different if it ... often wrote very rapidly with very little revision (Wyatt). Many of her stories were ahead of their time, so to speak and often were looked down upon by the people of the late 1800's (Bloom). Chopin often defied the social rules...

• Word Count: 721
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... 's mother was a slave and that he is the reason the child was dark-skinned. Hobson Fulcher 2 "The Storm" deals with two main characters, Calixta and Alcee. The plot in this story revolves around the adultery that Calixta and Alcee commit. Calixta's husband and son are stranded at the store when a storm rolls in. When Calixta is closing up her house, her old lover Alcee comes over on ... horseback to see her. Due to Calixta and Alcee's past history together, Calixta feels uneasy with Alcee's presence. When the storm begins, Alcee approaches Calixta ... alive. As Mrs. Mallard is walking d...

• Word Count: 646
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

Very little action is seen in Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour."" The story takes place in the springtime, in a house, and is set somewhere in the middle 1900's. Mrs. Mallard, a wife afflicted with heart trouble, is informed of her husband's tragic death by her sister Josephine. After a period of grieving, Mrs. Mallard retreats to the desolation of her bedroom and realizes that in a way she has become free ... sister Josephine pleads with her to come out of her room for fear she may make herself ill. Mrs. Mallard finally agrees and accompanies her sister downstairs. As they reach the bottom...

• Word Count: 591
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... time with her, hacked away at everything that was happy and carefree about her, reducing Mrs. Wright to nothing more that a sad old woman, with no contacts. The happy period associated with "The Story of an Hour" follows the end of Mrs. Mallard's grief over the death of her husband. Mrs. Mallard briefly grieves then is overcome by extreme joy. She considers herself free from all ... happiness is irrefutable because the source of sadness is removed. Mrs. Mallard's revisit to sadness is sudden and ultimately terminal. Once Mrs. Mallard is done grieving and at this point, totally happy, she...

• Word Count: 958
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... Mrs. Mallard sees her husband walk through the front door, the disappointment and the devastation of loss that she suffers causes her heart to fail. Seeing her husband at the door makes Mrs. Mallard realize that all this new freedom and the life which would know no limits is once again, no longer a possibility. When Mrs. Mallard walks down the stairs with her sister, she carries a "...feverish triumph ... in her eyes" (258). The front door opens, however, and her husband walks in. The scene has such an effect on her that it ends up killing Mrs. Mallard there on her stair case. Mrs. Mall...

• Word Count: 1010
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... was then that Mrs. Mallard suddenly became filled with somewhat joy and repeated the words, "free, free, free!" Ultimately, another example of irony is when Josephine finally got Mrs. Mallard to come out of the room and not be alone anymore. They both started to walk down the stairs of the house to the first floor while the front door was opening with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard entering and ... Richards try to screen him from the view of his wife, Mrs. Mallard. The last line of the story states, "When the doctors came they said she had died ... of heart disease---of joy that kil...

• Word Count: 666
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed" (KM 71). The shock of hearing such tragic news is unexplainable to me. The only other way I can put it is by saying that there are a thousand things running through a person ... to open it (KM 73). She finally opens the door, and arm and arm they walk down the stairs together. "Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey" (KM 73). The only person who wou...

• Word Count: 1389
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

... decides to move out into a smaller house not far down the road from where she used to live: "The "pigeon-house" stood behind a locked gate, and a shallow parterre that had been somewhat neglected" (Chopin 102). Edna's attempt to escape her husband, children, and society manifest this detained journey, as her efforts only land her in another cage, the pigeon house. This represents her inability to remove ... herself from her former life as her move only takes her just two steps away and shows the control her husband has on her. Caged birds serve as reminders of Edna's entrapment and also...

• Word Count: 1547
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... the tragic news she goes up stairs to her room and looks out an open window and notices "new spring life", "the delicious breath of rain", and "countless sparrows twittering in the eaves." As she looks out the window among the storm clouds, she stares at patches of blue sky. "It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of ... Grierson is similar to Louise Mallard and Mathilde Loisel because she also desires freedom. Emily is living with her domineering father that thinks "None of the men were quite good enough" for her. He isolates her from society, never allowin...

• Word Count: 778
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School