Evaluation Essay about The Story Of An Hour

📌Category: Books, Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour, Writers
📌Words: 535
📌Pages: 2
📌Published: 04 February 2022

It is revealed in the beginning, that  Louise has heart trouble and her friends' are hesitant towards telling Louise about her husband’s passing due to the fear of how she would take the news. After being told about her husband’s death, she took the information with great sorrow in her heart as any spouse would, and after the storm of immense grief began to fade from Louise's soul and the look of terror dispersed from her face she began to feel a warmth wash over her causing her body to relax, which is shown in “Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body”. 

The theme of "The Story of an Hour" is freedom from the shackles of a limiting marriage, this idea is best explored by this line from the story where Louise mumbles to herself “free, free, free”. As this story progresses, the reader will notice that the main character is developing more of a sense of freedom. Later on in the story, she says "Body and soul free" almost as if her newly liberated soul is developing its own freedom chant from within. This story can help us understand how marriage can delimit a person and how it can at times become a metaphorical cage surrounding the individualistic view of life because you cease being an individual and start becoming a couple, which can become limiting to one or both parties within a relationship, the passage that shows this view is “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”. 

However, after believing that he passed away she realized that she no longer had to live as a couple and could from that point on start living for herself which caused a sense of liberation and true freedom of self. Hemingway later says "there would be no one to live for during those coming years" which further shows the main character's feeling of freedom after her husband's alleged passing and how no one could sway her own will in years to come. Louise's will to go on living changed after the realization of her newly found freedom which is best shown by this passage “She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long" which continued to say "It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long”. After developing her new outlook on everyday life she began to see the world around her and allowed her imagination to go wild, this line best shows this "she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window" continuing to say "Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her”.

After Louise discovered her true self her heart condition took a toll upon the arrival of her husband Brently who was thought to have passed away. When Brently walked through the door his friend Richard attempted to block Louise from the view of Brently, but it was too late. Brently knew nothing of the accident in which they thought he died.  Proceeding Louise’s quick death the doctors arrived to evaluate her remains to determine her cause of death which is shown in this passage  “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease”, then Hemingway goes on to say “of joy that kills”.

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