The Story of an Hour

The title “The Story of an Hour” references the amount of time that elapses in Chopin’s tale, which tracks the emotions and thoughts of the protagonist, Mrs. Louise Mallard, upon learning of her husband’s death. Though the story barely exceeds 1,000 words, Chopin creates a sense of temporal expansion by intricately plotting the transition of Louise’s feelings from grief, to liberation, to joy, to determination, and finally to shock at her husband’s unexpected return. By employing a third-person omniscient narrator, Chopin balances these observations of Louise’s interior life with observations of contemporary social expectations for women in 1890s America. She uses psychological realism, a literary genre that prioritizes character interiority over action, and that was popular with late 19th-century writers who were also influenced by the naturalist and realist literary movements.

After the inciting incident—learning of her husband’s death—the only physical actions Louise takes in the story are retreating to her room, sitting and thinking, then walking back downstairs. Chopin portrays Louise’s changes in emotion as the actual events of the story, rather than depicting her feelings as reactions to plot events. This aligns the narrative with Louise’s individual experience. Instead of reacting to the news of Brently’s death with uncertainty or denial, as the narrator suggests “many women” would, Louise takes immediate action, fully expressing her grief then seeking the solitude of her thoughts. Alone, Louise is able to reckon fully with what she has lost and gained through her husband’s death. Chopin grounds Louise’s progression of thoughts with physical details including sight, smell, and sound, to make the shifts between feelings more immediate for the reader. For example, when Louise first retreats to her room in grief, she notices “trees […] aquiver with new spring life,” “the delicious breath of rain,” and “patches of blue sky”; these images of rejuvenation and hope help propel Louise’s transition from grief to liberation (Paragraphs 5, 6).

Louise recognizes the social impropriety of feeling the joy of freedom so soon after becoming a widow, and even “[strives] to beat [the realization] back with her will” (Paragraph 10), but she cannot resist the excitement of single life. In the climactic moment of the story, Louise welcomes the newfound independence of widowhood, and declares that her right to self-determination transcends both the interpersonal obligations of love and the social obligations of marriage. Brently is never portrayed as an especially or unusually controlling partner, but the social realities for married women in 1894 limit Louise’s ability to make choices about where and how she lives, and with whom she shares her life. Once Louise acknowledges that the bereavement of widowhood offers her the opportunity for self-determination, Chopin’s literary images become rooted in Louise’s own body and imagination rather than the external physical world. Louise’s “pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood [warms and relaxes] every inch of her body” (Paragraph 11); she “[spreads] her arms out” to welcome “a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely” (Paragraph 13). The physical focus of these images suggests the radical nature of the world Louise pictures, one defined by a sense of freedom that she has not yet experienced and has no worldly reference for; it is defined solely through her individual self.

Her protagonist’s character arc complete, Chopin returns to action-based plot as Josephine begs for entry to Louise’s room. Louise’s denial of her sister becomes her first act of radical independence, a symbolic exclusion of societal influence from her private life and an open rejection of external judgement on what she should think or feel.

The ironic ending of “The Story of an Hour” hinges on the failures of modern technology; without Richards’s unreliable telegram, Louise would not be shocked by her husband’s return, nor would she experience the sudden reversal of her new independence that precipitates her heart failure. All the emotional and personal growth she achieved over the course of the hour is undone instantaneously. Although the doctors ascribe Louise’s death to sudden, overwhelming happiness, Chopin’s reader understands that Brently’s return is in fact a threat to Louise’s newly independent life. Louise’s death is caused by the shock of her husband’s survival, and is foreshadowed ironically by the opening lines, in which Josephine fears her sister will die of shock at Brently’s death.