Story of an Hour, Essay Example

Love may be important but nothing beats the freedom to live your life the way you want. Today women have far better rights than the time when Kate Chopin wrote Story of an hour. The central ideas of the story are best understood using contextualization (Salisbury University)as the critical reading strategy. Mrs. Mallard’s sister Josephine and her husband’s friend Mr. Richards are concerned because they saw Mrs. Mallards as a wife and not an individual

Mrs. Mallards knows she may feel the pain upon seeing Mr. Mallard’s dead body but the grief doesn’t compare to the joy she feels due to her newfound freedom. She feels she was in a prison which is marriage and now “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself.” (Chopin, Kate). She imagines all the beautiful things in life she would be able to experience and how her body and soul felt alive for the first time. The story hints at the feminist ideals of the author who saw women as equal to men and not as property of husbands. Kate Chopin saw no purpose in marriage because it was not a relationship based on equality. Mrs. Mallards had embraced her newfound freedom to such an extent that upon seeing her husband alive, she passed away. The taste of freedom was so addictive that she could not muster the strength to go back to her previous life.

References

Chopin, Kate. The Story of An Hour. 15 October 2011 <http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/hour/>.

Salisbury University. 7 Critical Reading Strategies. 15 October 2011 <http://www.salisbury.edu/counseling/new/7_critical_reading_strategies.html>