Although reading fiction has a profound influence on forming one’s own independent judgment, it is often important to pay attention to other recognized opinions. This paper tries to incorporate several research articles into discussing Kate Chopin’s short story “The Story of an Hour”. It was originally published in the magazine Vogue in 1984 and did not have significant recognition from critics during her life. Nevertheless, after the 1950s, there was a rise in the exploration of Kate Chopin’s literary legacy. The secondary literature shows that the conventional reading of Chopin’s story “The Story of an Hour” does not consider the stylistic concerns and the author’s mastery of using language.
In general, Kate Chopin’s short story is about women’s emancipation and independence values. Louise Mallard, the protagonist of the story, received the news about the death of her husband, Brently Mallard, and suffered mixed feelings about her prospects in the future. Initially, she experienced an irresistible feeling of bitterness and suffering because of the death of a loved one. It was the “physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul” (Chopin, 1894). However, then she realized that the death of her husband was her emancipation from inequalities and unfreedom. At the end of the story, Lousie Mallard understands that her husband is alive, which is fatal news for her. As a result, she died because of a heart attack.
What makes this story special is the unique language used to describe Lousie’s change of mind within the hour she reconsidered her relations with her husband. The most dramatic moment was when she refused to open the door to her sister Josephine. Chopin (1894) explained this decision: “[Lousie Mallard] was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window”. It emphasizes how this experience of emancipation and the power of womanhood that women of the 19th century were afraid to manifest in public was important for them.
In the academic literature, one will find many studies about the stylistics and meaning of “The Story of an Hour”. Yazgi (2020) puts this story in the context of a time when it was impossible to discuss women’s rights and perceptions publicly. Hence, Chopin considered the possibility of a huge conservative backlash against her protagonist. This fact influenced her language choice and stylistic design. Citing Aristotle’s rhetorical analysis of Greek literature, Yazgi (2020) concludes that Chopin specifically used a form of tragedy to cause sympathy among a large audience. The use of anagnorisis (realization of the past), peripeteia (change to the opposite of things), and catastrophe (moment of illumination) are evident in “The Story of an Hour”. This formula derived from Aristotle’s writing greatly affects the readers and effectively convinces them of apparent social problems. In addition, Mohameed’s (2022) article provided an Eastern perception of the story, which is difficult to formulate for Westerners. She points to the enormous meaning of the blue sky in the text, which means the rebirth of Lousie’s soul in the process of reflection. It corresponds to the initial finding that the opened window has an important meaning for this story because Lousie saw the new freedom and broad opportunities through it.
To conclude, reading the secondary literature was an effective process to gain more insights into the meaning of Chopin’s “The Story of An Hour”. Before that, although the language was perceived as strong and convincing, it was hard to conceptualize why the author had chosen such metaphors. However, the academic literature provided a more detailed background of the story and explained how the plot of tragedy and the metaphor of blue skies influence the comprehension of the text.
References
Chopin, K. (1894). The story of an hour. Virginia Commonwealth University Archive. Web.
Mohameed, M. K. (2022). Kate Chopin’s portrait of a wife as a free woman in “The Story of an Hour”. Journal of Al-Farahidi’s Arts, 14(50), 550-556. Web.
Yazgı, C. (2020). Tragic elements and discourse-time in “The story of an hour”. The Explicator, 78(3-4), 147-152. Web.