"The Story of an Hour" is a short story centering on a young married woman of the late nineteenth century as she reacts to a report that her husband has died in a train accident. 

Publication

Vogue magazine first published "The Story of an Hour" in its issue of December 6, 1894, under the title "The Dream of an Hour." On January 5, 1895, Sue V. Moore, a journalist friend of Chopin, reprinted the story in St. Louis Life, a newspaper of which Moore was editor. Over the years, it was republished again and again in literature anthologies under the title "The Story of an Hour."

Setting

The action takes place in a single hour in an American home in the last decade of the nineteenth Century. 

Observance of the Unities

The story observes the classical unities of time, place, and action. These unities dictate that the events in a short story should take place (1) in a single day and (2) in a single location as part of (3) a single story line with no subplots. French classical writers, interpreting guidelines established by Aristotle for stage dramas, formulated the unities. Over the centuries, many writers began to ignore them, but many playwrights and authors of short stories continued to use them. 

Characters

Mrs. Louise Mallard: Young, attractive woman who mourns the reported death of her husband but exults in the freedom she will enjoy in the years to come. 
Brently Mallard: Mrs. Mallard's husband.
Josephine: Mrs. Mallard's sister.
Richards: Friend of Brently Mallard.
Doctors: Physicians who arrive too late to save Mrs. Mallard. 

Plot Summary
By Michael J. Cummings...© 2006
.
.Brently Mallard has died in a train accident, according to a report received at a newspaper office. Mr. Richards, a friend of Mallard, was in the newspaper office when the report came in. He tells Mallard’s sister-in-law, Josephine, of Mallard’s death, and accompanies Josephine to the Mallard home. Because Mallard’s wife, Louise—a young, attractive woman—suffers from a heart condition, Josephine announces news of the tragedy as gently as possible. 

Mrs. Mallard breaks down, crying fitfully, then goes upstairs to a room to be alone. There she sits down and gazes out a window, sobbing. It is spring. Birds sing, and the trees burst with new life. It had been raining, but now patches of blue sky appear. 

Suddenly, an extraordinary thought occurs to Mrs. Mallard, interrupting her grieving: She is free. She is now an independent woman—at liberty to do as she pleases. Because Mrs. Mallard seems to feel guilty at this thought, she tries to fight it back at first. Then she succumbs to it, allowing it to sweep over her. She whispers, “Free, free, free!” 

To be sure, she will cry at the funeral. However, in the years to come, she will know nothing but joy and happiness, for there will be “no powerful will bending her” to do its bidding. Of course, she had loved her husband. Well, sometimes. On other occasions, she had not loved him at all. But what does it matter now, she thinks, whether or how much she had loved her husband? The important thing is that she is free. 

Worried about her sister, Josephine pounds on Mrs. Mallard’s door, begging entry. But Louise, saying she is all right, tells her to go away. Mrs. Mallard then resumes her revelry about the wondrous future before her—all the days that will belong to her alone. Only yesterday she wished that life would be short; now she wishes that life will be long. 

At length, she answers the door and goes downstairs with Josephine. At the bottom of the stairs, Mr. Richards stands waiting while someone is opening the front door. It is Brently Mallard. There had been a mix-up. He was not in the accident, or even near it, when it occurred. Josephine shrieks. Richards quickly moves in front of Brently to prevent Mrs. Mallard from seeing him. But it is too late. 

Physicians later determine that Mrs. Mallard’s death resulted from “joy that kills.” Her weak heart could not withstand the happy shock of seeing her husband alive and whole.
  .
Theme

Oppression

Society in late nineteenth century expected women to keep house, cook, bear and rear children—but little more. Despite efforts of women’s-rights activists such as Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, women still had not received the right to vote in national elections by the century’s end. Moreover, employers generally discriminated against women by hiring them for menial jobs only and paying them less than men for the same work. The Story of an Hour hints that Mrs. Mallard’s husband—perhaps a typical husband of his day—dominated his wife.

Repression

Louise Mallard appears to have been a weak-willed woman, one who probably repressed her desire to control her destiny. Consequently, during her marriage, she suffered constant stress that may well have caused or contributed to her "heart trouble," referred to in the first sentence of the story. 
 

Symbolism

Examples of symbols in the story are the following:

Springtime (Paragraph 5): The new, exciting life that Mrs. Mallard thinks is awaiting her.
Patches of Blue Sky (Paragraph 6): Emergence of her new life.

Examples of figures of speech are the following:
Revealed in half-concealing (Paragraph 2): Paradox
Storm of grief (Paragraph 3): Metaphor
Physical exhaustion that haunted her body (Paragraph 4): Metaphor/Personification
Breath of rain (Paragraph 5): Metaphor
Song which someone was singing (Paragraph 5): Alliteration
Clouds that had met (Paragraph 6): Metaphor/Personification
The sounds, the scents (Paragraph 9): Alliteration
Thing that was approaching to possess her (Paragraph 10): Metaphor/Personification
Monstrous joy (Paragraph 12): Oxymoron
She carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory (Paragraph 20): Simile
Joy that kills (Paragraph 23): Paradox. The phrase is also ironic, since the doctors mistakenly believe that Mrs. Mallard was happy to see her husband alive.

Not until Paragraph 16 does the reader learn the protagonist’s first name, Louise. Why the author delayed revealing her given name is open to speculation. I believe the author did so to suggest that the young woman lacked individuality and identity until her husband’s reported death liberated her. Before that time, she was merely Mrs. Brently Mallard, an appendage grafted onto her husband’s identity. While undergoing her personal renaissance alone in her room, she regains her own identity. It is at this time that her sister, Josephine, calls out, “Louise, open the door!” However, there is irony in Mrs. Mallard’s first name: Louise is the feminine form of the masculine Louis. So even when Mrs. Mallard takes back her identity, it is in part a male identity. (Michael J. Cummings, Cummings Study Guides)

Foreshadowing

The opening sentence of the story foreshadows the ending—or at least hints that Mrs. Mallard’s heart condition will affect the outcome of the story. Morever, this sentence also makes the ending believable. Without an early reference to her heart ailment, the ending would seem implausible and contrived.

Mrs. Mallard's Heart Condition

As the story unfolds, the reader discovers that Mrs. Mallard’s heart ailment may have resulted—in part, at least—from the stress caused by her reaction to her inferior status in a male-dominated culture and to a less-than-ideal marriage. For example, in paragraph 8, Chopin says the young woman’s face “bespoke repression”; in paragraph 14, the author tells us that a “powerful will” was “bending" Mrs. Mallard. Finally, in paragraph 15, Chopin notes: “Often she had not” loved her husband. 

Author

Kate Chopin (1851-1904) is best known for her short stories (more than 100) and a novel, The Awakening. One of her recurring themes—the problems facing women in a society that repressed them—made her literary works highly popular in the late twentieth century. They remain popular today. 

Study Questions and Essay Topics

1. The story says Mrs. Mallard “had loved him [her husband]—sometimes. Often she did not.” If she was “often” not in love with him, why did she marry him?
2. What was life like for Mrs. Mallard in the home of Brently Mallard?
3. In the report of the train accident, Brently Mallard's name was at the top of the list of fatalities (Paragraph 2). Does this information mean that Mallard was an important citizen in his community? Does it also suggest that perhaps Louise married him, in part, because of his standing in the community? 
4. Do you believe Brently Mallard mistreated his wife? In answering this question, keep in mind the following: (1) In Paragraph 13, Louise Mallard recalls that Brently was kind and that "he had never looked save with love upon her." (2) However, Paragraph 8 had previously informed the reader that Mrs. Mallard's face "bespoke repression," and Paragraph 14 says Brently had a "powerful will bending her." 
5. How much of Mrs. Mallard's apparent unhappiness in her marriage was her own fault?
6. After Mrs. Mallard receives news that her husband died in a train accident, she goes to “her room.” Do these two words mean that she slept separately from her husband? Does the fact that no children are named in the story indeed indicate that she and her husband slept apart?
7. Write an essay about what society expected of the typical nineteenth-century American woman. 
8. Research the life of Kate Chopin (1851-1904). Then decide whether the death of her husband in 1882 influenced her when she wrote “The Story of an Hour,” published in 1894 in Vogue magazine.
9. Did author Chopin herself face problems similar to those of Mrs. Mallard?
10. Write an essay comparing and contrasting Mrs. Mallard and Nora Helmer in A Doll's House, by Henrik Ibsen.