Story Of An Hour Literary Analysis

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Kate Chopin limits the setting in her short literary work “The Story of an Hour” to a room, a staircase, and a front door in order to convey a theme of marriage confinement. At the commencement of this narrative, Mrs. Mallard was given a troubling report; her husband had perished in a railroad disaster. She was quite dismayed by this fact and burst into tears, going up to her room to be alone soon after receiving the news. As Mrs. Mallard sat in her chamber, she began to ruminate, her contemplation concluding with her statement, ‘“free, free, free!”’ (Chopin 525). As a result of her husband’s death, she had been liberated from the bonds of marriage. Being a wife in the Victorian era meant that once Ms. Mallard became Mrs. Mallard, she would be made to live by the will of her husband and to carry out marital duties that came with being female. …show more content…
As a wife, that was all she had known and lived for; however, now that her husband had passed, she need not follow his desires or be confined any longer. “There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature” (Chopin 525). Mrs. Mallard had finally gained the opportunity to break free and come out of her room, descend the staircase, and venture out the door so she could begin living for herself. “But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome” (Chopin 525). Despite her unbridled excitement in regards to being able to live for herself, she became ambivalent when her husband walked through the door alive and