Kate Chopin uses characterization, tactile sensory imagery, and setting to express the following authorial attitude: life can be ironic. The author depicts this through her characterization of Louise by her thoughts and feeling, what she hears when she goes downstairs, the setting she sees outside her window, and Louise’s room’s setting. Chopin uses Louise’s feelings and thoughts, characterizing Louise, to depict the authorial attitude. Louise’s feeling of freedom when “She said it over and over under her breath: ‘free, free, free!’”is very ironic. One would think that in the course of a person’s life when a relative dies, that that person would have feelings of grief. However, here Louise expresses feelings of freedom instead. This shows that life is ironic. Also, what Louise dreads one day the next day she hopes for. “She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.” As one can see, life can be highly ironic as it can change drastically, even to a polar opposite, within a day's time.…show more content… Mrs. Mallard sinks into her armchair “pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.” Notice that it is a physical exhaustion that presses her down, anguishes her body, and extends into her soul rather than an emotional exhaustion. She should be exhausted emotionally, due to the loss of her husband, which should take the place of any physical exhaustion she may have previously had. One might think that the emotional exhaustion would cause her to overlook her physical exhaustion. Instead, she is ironically “taken over” by a physical exhaustion, with emotional exhaustion playing a much smaller role at this
