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The Story of an Hour


            
             To understand the meaning behind Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" one would need to understand her past. She was born February 8, 1851 to Thomas and Eliza O'Flatery in St. Louis, Missouri (Haywood 1). After her father's untimely death in 1855, Chopin was raised by her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother (Ker 1). She attended St. Louis Academy of Sacred Heart, an all-girl school taught by nuns, and graduated June of 1968. With no strong male figure consistently in her life Chopin married Oscar Chopin in 1870, and was widowed in 1882. A couple of years later she sold her plantation and moved her family back to St. Louis (2). At the age of thirty-nine Chopin began her career as strong-willed feminist writer (Haywood 2). .
             In the short story "The Story of an Hour" Chopin questions the need for dependency on another person, particularly men, to fulfill the needs and desire for happiness. Chopin opens the story by introducing Mrs. Mallard, "afflicted with a heart trouble," receiving the news of her husband's untimely death. Mrs. Mallard bursts with emotion and then seeks solitude in her room. "There stood, facing an open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank." The symbolic feeling of the armchair is warm, inviting and calm. The open window is opportunity. Out this window Mrs. Mallard could see "tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life." Looking out the window at her new life, she is seeing rebirth and watching the trees opening up to heaven for her. "There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other." Though life may seem beyond horrible, Chopin is showing that there is happiness beyond devastation; people just need to open their eyes to see it. Mrs. Mallard understands this. She "abandoned herself" and realizes that while her "repression" is dead, she is alive and ahead of her stood a life for her to fill with happiness.


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