Mrs. Mallard In The Story Of An Hour

Words: 1106
Pages: 5

Leo Tolstoy once said, “Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy,” suggesting that it is not possible for someone to be miserable and joyful all of the time. Eventually, something will happen to you that will lift you up from your grief, and something horrific will happen to you that will take your happiness away. This is exactly what happened to Mrs. Mallard in The Story of An Hour. Kate Chopin’s short story, The Story of An Hour tells the tale of Mrs. Mallard, a young woman who finds out that her husband died in a railroad accident. She feels grief, but only for a short amount of time. She then goes to her room to be alone, where she starts to feel something coming towards her. She realizes that she can be free from …show more content…
Mallard turns her husband’s death into positive thing, the reader notices yet another change in her character. Mrs. Mallard becomes disappointed when she finds out that her husband was not actually dead, and she loses all of her hope. When Josephine, Mrs. Mallard’s sister, takes her downstairs, she sees something. “Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who had entered… He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one” (19). Brently Mallard unexpectedly turns out to be alive. Mrs. Mallard had just developed all of this hope for her future, and she can no longer have it. “He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richard’s quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife. When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease --- of the joy that kills” (19 & 20). Mrs. Mallard is so surprised and so upset that her husband is actually still alive, she ends up dying from the shock of seeing him. She knew once Mr Mallard walked through that door that all of her freedom was being taken away from her; something that she could not imagine. Mrs. Mallard’s freedom only lasted for a couple of minutes, and was ripped away from