Situational irony had been shown when Louise had suddenly had a heart attack from seeing her husband, but not for the reasons the characters believe. The characters in the story had drawn assumptions previously within the plot when she had been weeping, but her sister had thought she was grieving the loss of her husband. Instead, Louise was actually screaming and crying in joy for her newly found freedom from forever being miserably married. At the end, when Louise had seen her husband walk through the front door and then she had suddenly fallen ill and died, only the audience knows her true emotions towards seeing him alive. The characters in the story had still remained to believe that she had died in over joyment in seeing Brently Mallard, her husband, alive. Instead, Mrs. Mallard had passed in shock and the sudden realization that now that her husband had still been alive, the freedom and live she had imagined for her future self would no longer