The Story of an Hour is a short essay that describes what Mrs. Mallard goes
through when she finds out her husband has been killed in a train accident. At
first she is extremely sad but when she looks out the window it becomes apparent
to her that she is free. Mrs. Mallard is overwhelmed with the thought that her
body and soul are now free. Despite the loss of Mr. Mallard she is overcome with
happiness and feels rejuvenated with the prospect of being free in years to
come. In a sense she feels like a bird that has just been let out of its cage
after years of captivity. After a while she heads back down stairs to talk to
Richards, the man that brought her the news of her husband’s death. As soon as
she gets to the bottom of the stairs Mr. Mallard walks in looking a little
travel stained. The shock of seeing her husband alive causes her to have a heart
attack and die. Mrs. Mallard plays a character that has to deal with very
serious emotions. Her emotional state goes from one end of the spectrum to the
other in only an hour. It seems that she dies because of the joy of seeing her
husband alive. I think she dies because of an entirely different reason. She had
a history of heart problems but those could be attributed to the fact that she
was unhappy and felt like she was in captivity. When Mrs. Mallard realized that
she was free it seemed that an elixir ran through her body and made her feel
brand new and wonderful. I believe that if her husband had really died she would
have lived many more years. Upon finding out that her husband was indeed alive
she died. The doctor said that it was over joy that caused her heart to fail.
The way Mrs. Mallard’s character had acted up until this point leads us in
another direction. Her death was almost like a suicide. When Mr. Mallard showed
up she then knew that she would be returned to captivity. She chose death over
leaving the happiness that she had so briefly enjoyed. She did not want to go on
living wishing that she had the freedom she had once known. The story is told
through Mrs. Mallard’s point of view. If the story had been told by anyone
else it would have had no meaning at all. The story would have just been a women
dying of heart disease because she could not take the emotional roller coaster
of finding out her husband was dead and then seeing him alive. People could
argue both points but the clues Mrs. Mallard gave us shows the way to the real
meaning of this story. The story being told from Mrs. Mallard’s point of view
is essential in making the readers aware of the underlying reasons of her death.
When she dies everyone has positive memories. Mrs. Mallard is happy because she
gets the freedom she wanted so desperately and Mr. Mallard believes his wife
died of joy because he was still alive. This story symbolizes the way many women
feel in the world today. To many women feel that they are prisoners in their
relationships. Not very many women feel that they have the freedom they deserve.
Most women do not have the courage to end unhappy relationships so they just go
on being miserable. Mrs. Mallard had a not so pleasant way of obtaining her
freedom but she did it none the less. Her husband never did anything really
wrong and always showed her love, but she just was not happy. The Story of an
Hour symbolizes the way some women feel confined in relationships.