The Story of an Hour

A. Mrs. Mallard had a heart disease that could prove fatal if startled to much, her husband has supposedly died and no one knows how she will respond to except that they think she might die. Upon telling her she leaves the room to focus on her own thoughts alone. She sank into a chair and thought deeply while staring into the "patches of blue sky" while awaiting what she felt was something coming to her, something she thought she could feel reaching towards her "through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air." It then suddenly hit her, that, she was rather happy that her husband was dead. Fearing the fact the she might have to spend her long life for her husband, when she heard of his death she was more than happy to respond with the feeling that she can take over and do things for her life now. Now excited enough to be over the whole ordeal she leaves the room and heads down stairs to continue the rest of her life, untill she sees her husband and drops dead because he is still alive, not because she is happy to see him, but because she is so disappointed to have to carry on the rest of HIS life.

B. Chopin is trying to point out that many married couples, especially ones that are old, feel more like they are stuck to another person unable to pursue their own personal goals in life, rather than happy they get to spend the rest of their life with someone. Although people get married and apparently enjoy it most of the time, Chopin is trying to show, marriage cuts off alot of your own ideas and goals in life, especially in a society where male is seen as the dominating sex that usually leads to a married life that focuses on his goals and cuts of the oppertunity for the other. So, what Choplin points out is, people sometimes are very happy when their loved ones die, because it gives them sort of another chance at what they had lost one time.