Story Of An Hour Literary Analysis Essay

Why do women feel trapped in their household and cemented to their husband forever? Women today have many more freedoms than they did hundreds of years ago, but they still feel like they have to stay with their husband even if they have been treated unfairly. Mrs. Louise Mallard in the short story, “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, battles the sudden death of her husband. Chopin illustrates how the middle-aged woman feels after becoming grief-stricken over her husband's death at the beginning of the story, but after some time alone she realizes she is free. The author explains the new found freedom from the pain and loneliness Mrs. Mallard once felt. She is free to experience life and all the joy and happiness it brings. The internal and external conflicts in this story were created by gender role issues that are shown through figurative language and irony.

Through external and internal conflict, the habitual way women have …show more content…
Towards the middle of the story, Louise realizes how happy she can be now after the death of her husband. Readers know of her happiness, but the characters in the story do not know about it. He or she reading the story assumes Louise is grief struck, which is a prime example of dramatic irony. The dramatic irony in this story is also used to symbolize the entrapment she feels. Her entrapment expresses women's struggle to survive on their own without their husbands during this time. Situational irony is revealed when we find out her husband is alive. "[Mr. Brently Mallard] had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one" (Chopin 14). Irony drives the story by gender by creating grief for Louise Mallard that is not true throughout the story. While others in the story do not know of Mrs. Mallard's happiness, situational and dramatic irony drive the story in a different direction the reader does not

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Literary Analysis- the Story of an Hour Essay