After her tears had passed and she had become more poised, Mrs. Mallard locks herself in her room and begins to realize the true gravity of the situation. She, at first, is unwilling to accept her coming feelings but is soon overcome with them. She is free, free to live her life for herself and impartial from any other individual. As she slowly grasps this realization she is once again overcome, not by fear or sorrow, but by joy and a sense of self. After Mrs. Mallard has accepted her revelation, and with the pleading of her sister, she makes her way back downstairs. Where at that moment her husband enters the door; Mrs. Mallard is overcome once again, this time by death.
Chopin did not try to bury her viewpoints deep within the story. Instead she placed them directly on surface obvious for everyone to see. Her implication and skepticism of marriage being an instrument to hold women at bay is quite apparent in Mrs. Mallard's epiphany (Larsson 537). Mrs. Mallard had come to the realization that "There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself- (Jacobus 234). That she would be able to engage in any activity or event she pleased, without the will of another enforced upon her. Chopin's deepest critical .
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metaphor for marriage is a simple pun, calling wedlock at its essence a crime. "There would be no powerful will bending her in blind persistence [marriage] . A kind .
intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it -(Jacobus 234). In the development of the story Chopin also denounces love as being a strong enough factor for a women to be burdened and held back by marriage. .
"And yet she loved him "sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!-(Jacobus 234).