Was inspired by an accident that took place in 1855, during the ceremonial opening of a bridge connecting St. Louis and Jefferson City, the structure collapsed and all but one car of a Pacific Railroad train plunged into the Gasconade River, killing more than thirty passengers and injuring scores of others. Among the dead was the father of five-year-old Katherine O’Flaherty, who would later become famous as the writer Kate Chopin. The story mainly focuses on the repression that women suffered in the relationship between men and women. She Further, Chopin use Mrs. Mallard to represent love and hate. First, this story is an easy way to understand how some women used to suffer from oppression by men back in the 1800s and 1900s. At the time this story was written, women were quite frequently mistreated and had to live restricted lives that lacked opportunities to pursue their dreams. The writer of this story describes this issue in the relationship between genders with the Mallard´s marriage but mainly with Mrs. Mallard. Secondly, Kate Chopin also mixed the issue with the representation of the love of freedom and the hate of being repressed that Mrs. Mallard goes through during that hour. The love of freedom is expressed by the happiness she felt when her sister told her that her husband was dead. Moreover, the hate she was drowned in, since she cannot live in the way she would like to generate by a limitation of men´s oppression.
First, the main character Mrs. Mallard did not hear the notice of the accident of her husband in the way as many women would have heard. To understand why Louise did not feel sad about this notice it is important to analyze how she felt about her marriage. At that time, women were restrained and undervalued by unacceptable social expectations upon marriage. “There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature” (The Story of an Hour). Mrs. Mallard was both depressed and repressed. At the moment, women lived in a world where they were totally subjected to a patriarchal world. Getting married meant giving up any kind of aspiration for a life of your own and dedicating yourself to your husband and family while your husband could choose what to do with his life and fight for his dreams. Women could not make their own decisions and lived with dignity meant getting married and having children.
In the society of that time period women achieve ‘her purpose in life’ when she married and formed a family. Even though it sounds shocking to read it like that, the only purpose of a women in life was to take care of the house and the children while her husband was working and living the way he wanted. There was no freedom of opinion in any aspect or area of life. Usually this was because men were the ones who had education and work experience so they were the only ones who could form an opinion about any type of topic. On the contrary, women were restricted, they were not part of the labor aspects, much less political. Failing to get married at a certain age and start a family was something that society considered a failure for women. That is why they were forced to live in submission even if marriage was not what they wanted the most. This is what is interpreted to happen to Mr. Mallard that after living a life totally dedicated to her husband, resigning her aspirations and dreams to give place to those of her partner, they had filled her with hatred.
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The descriptions found in the story are other of the main causes by which the main character represents the repression to which women were enslaved at that time by men. As stated in ¨The Story of an Hour¨, ‘she was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines indicate repression and even a certain strength’. Although Mallard was young, she did not have the same illusions or desires that a person should have at their young age. According to the description made by the story, her face had samples of a woman oppressed and tired of that situation. Her description brings to my mind the image of someone who does not have the opportunity to live her life for herself if not for others. She was unmotivated, she had no reason to live, she was not happy.
The description plays a very important role in the story because it determines the completely different moods in Mrs. Mallards before and after receiving the news about the supposed death of her husband. Before the news her expressions were sad, apathetic and empty. Her life was miserable, she was full of hate. But after the death of her husband, as stated in the story by Chopin, she finds her liberation from the domestic confinements for the first time because of her husband’s death. (Fahimeh). Presently, she was feeling that she was going to live and fight to become aware of her dreams or that she will have the opportunity to do what she understood was the best for her life. Now, her facial expressions transmitted illusion, motivation and desire to live. ¨She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought¨ (The Story of an Hour).
In the first place, the love of freedom is expressed in the way in which Mrs. Mallard reacts to the death of her husband. According to Investopedia, she had another perspective to see life, a different outlook. Instead of being sad, she felt otherwise completely different and if for any person it is totally strange that she is not negatively moved by this news, for her it is not. Her reaction is based on the feeling that generates for the first time in her life to feel free. She begun to recognize the feeling and she let out the words “free, free, free” (Investopedia). Once and for all, she felt that she was going to be the owner of her life and that she could live it for herself. ¨There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow- creature¨ (The Story of an Hour). This story is about Mrs. Mallard’s husband’s death that turned into her freedom. Another thing that the author of this story adds as a detail but determinant in the representation of freedom, is that the protagonist receives her personal name at the time she receives the news that she had no more husband. She did not have a proper name but her husband’s surname and Chopin gives her name in symbolization of freedom.
Mrs. Mallard´s hate was not directed towards her husband. In the story at any time it was mentioned that her relationship was bad, by the contrary, she was subject to the relationship settled by the society between men and women. ¨And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often, she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being! ¨ (The Story of an Hour). As the story expresses, she had loved him sometimes but not always. She loved him, but she most loved the idea of being free so it is important to ask how someone can feel love for who takes away their freedom? One must be free to love and do it in a correct way and Mrs. Mallard could not love him because she did not feel free and the slavery that she felt was due to her marriage, it convicted her to hate. This is why when she finds out about her husband’s death, she does not feel sad. The hatred of those who take away your freedom will always be greater than love.
The hatred he had felt throughout his life had now disappeared when he met the love of freedom. She can tell freedom’s coming for her, and she dreads it. Once it arrives, though, it fills her with an overpowering joy. Yet, she experiences this mental and emotional freedom while being confined to a room. As soon as she leaves that room, the freedom she’d only just barely begun to understand is taken away from her (Shmoop University). At the end of the story, Mrs. Mallard dies after seeing her husband enter the door and he was alive. She died instantly, she had imagined herself free, but it only lasted an hour. Through the door she saw oppression and slavery enter again, hatred was entering her house and the image of freedom disappeared. Love had turned to dust the moment the door opened. For Mrs. Mallard, dying was even more pleasant and more beautiful than living a life condemned to the patriarchal society that forced her to be married. She knew that the only way to break her marriage was with her husband’s death and he had reached it, but only for an hour.
Mallard thought she had found her way but in the end her husband was alive and that shock, made her pass away. Kate Chopin perfectly mixes the repression suffered by women with the love of freedom that Louise Mallard felt after receiving the news of her husband´s death and the hatred for being oppressed and having no other choice that getting married. The author Chopin very well uses the character Mrs. Mallard to interpret and give the reader the image of how women suffered at that time period respect to the relationship with men. Finally, this story explains how important is for a person to be free in order to feel love for others. If someone does not have the liberty to act or be whatever they want to be, then it is very difficult to love in a healthy way. Even if she loved him sometimes, the love of being free was bigger than everything. The repression and her need to live her life by herself pushed Mrs. Mallard to act in the way she did. And later, it would drive her to death. Anyone in this world needs to be free to love and this is what Kate Chopin sought to reflect through her main character. It is essential for a person to enjoy their rights in total freedom. On the contrary, we will never be able to achieve happiness or even feel love. Living as slaves can lead us to experience hatred and, consequently, to prefer death rather than living in this way.
