Introduction
‘The Story of an Hour’ is about a young woman Louise who receives news of her husband’s death. She rejoices in her newfound freedom and looks forward to a future where she can live for herself. However, at the end of the story, it turns out that her husband is not dead. The character, it is said, dies of joy, or rather of disappointment. The death of a husband for Louise could not overshadow her joy at the coming new life that she could devote to herself. Chopin in the story shows how marriage at that time limited the freedom of women and deprived them of their own will.
Discussion
The story presents important points about the nature of marriage for women of that period. First of all, the death of her husband for a young woman was marked by the beginning of a new life, which both inspires and frightens her. The young woman underlines that she is now “free, free, free!” (Chopin 1). She realizes that her life will change completely and she will have to gain freedom, which was previously inaccessible to her.
Louise notes that she will feel bitterness at the sight of her dead husband, to whom she is attached, and has warm feelings. She knows that “she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death” (Chopin 1). However, this fact does not scare her, as she is in anticipation of a new free life. She looks forward to the long years that she will spend without restrictions of freedom and devotes them only to herself. A young woman seeks to free herself from a marriage in which it is the norm to “impose a private will upon a fellow creature” (Chopin 1). Even Louise’s love for her husband does not exceed her desire to free herself from the constant need to serve someone else’s will without having the right to her own separate life.
Thus, marriage for women of that time is seen as a restriction or even complete deprivation of their own will. Upon learning of the death of her husband, Louise, although she experienced bitterness from a sudden loss, was in the highest joy at the possibility of liberation. Her sister in this situation symbolizes the social restrictions and expectations that were imposed on women of that period. Society could not accept that women could have a desire for their own freedom and life for themselves, they were meant to live in marriage and obey the will of men. Louise gazed hopefully into the open window of opportunity that the death of her husband presented before her. However, this position could not be accepted in society and it was reprehensible for a young woman to experience joy in this situation.
Having known fleeting freedom, Louise dies of joy when she sees her husband on the threshold of the house, alive and well. This element symbolizes the fact that having met with such reliable freedom and joy from realizing her own future, a young woman would no longer be able to return to her former life. For the women of that period, marriage was more of a cage that some wanted to get out of. People like Louise yearned for freedom and couldn’t bear to lose her again.
Conclusion
Thus, Chopin shows that the women of that time were forced to obey the will of their husbands, and marriage for them was a restriction of freedom. Of course, this situation could not worry all women, but some of them even then aspired to independence and responsibility for their own lives.
Work Cited
Chopin, Kate. The Story of an Hour. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1894. Web.