SSRJ #1 The story of an hour by Kate Chopin

This short story caught me completely off guard and made the story that much more interesting. It started out a little mundane to my taste and not the type of story that I would read in my leisure time. The main character, a woman with a heart condition, is just something that is not on my reading list. As the story went on and it seemed like everything was fitting into place. Mrs. Mallard was starting to handle the news and calm herself then the reader is shocked with the huge twist which makes the whole story exiting and surprising. There is nothing in my life that relates directly to the story and I hope there never is. The ending of the story reminded me of “Romeo and Juliet”. Both stories leave the reader wanting to change the outcome and somehow help the characters. Kate Chopin used irony in this particular story. She began with the image of Mrs. Mallard wanting peace and looking at the clouds and the outdoors for comfort and “freedom”. “There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and screamed to reach into her soul. She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life”(15). As she sat there all she longed for was freedom and peace. Sitting by the window she was “drinking in a very elixir of life”(16) and regaining the strength to live on through the days alone. The conclusion was where the author uses irony to tie in the rest of the story. As Mrs. Mallard’s assumed to be dead husband walks through the door she is overtaken with tremendous joy which causes her heart to give out and she dies. “It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his gripsack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife. But Richards was too late. When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease – of joy that kills”(16). Kate portrayed the character as wanting to be free of the pain and strong enough to continue living the rest of her life alone. As soon as Mrs. Mallard accepted that decision she ended up dying because of it. The only thing that really stood out to me as not entirely believable was the fact that Mrs. Mallard’s grieving time was so short. “But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come”(16). It seems too soon to be looking past the burial ceremony and onto the rest of her life. Does anyone else think the same way?