The Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin’s The Story of An Hour is, on the surface, a romantic tale of a woman who wiles away the boring, husbandless hours she encounters alone in her room, waiting for her spouse to return. Through a strange mix-up concerning his death, and subsequent resurrection, she finds herself suffering from a life-ending heart attack herself. Those around her believe she has died from the sheer joy of find her husband has not died after all. Anybody who truly knew her would know she had actually died from a tragically broken heart, for she was a woman forlorn and utterly trapped in the astonishingly boring cage that was marriage.
Chopin begins symbolism in the story with the heart trouble that afflicts the main character. Louise, wife of Brently, suffers from a heart condition. The heart condition is a physical abnormality, but it is also meant to be symbolic of the crushing angst and depression marriage has caused her, as well as the despair she feels at her own lack of freedom. The first thing we learn about Louise is that she has a heart condition, which lets the reader know it is both serious physically and symbolically. It hangs over her, and is the primary issue that makes Brently’s death so threatening to her. Louise’s friends still believe her to be a happily married woman and do not wish to cause her any distress based upon her heart condition; on the contrary, at the news of his death, Louise becomes quite relieved. She even becomes happy. As she realizes she is no longer married and is essentially free, something she has longed for as long as she can remember, her heart pumps strongly in her chest, feeling rejuvenated. Her official diagnosis of heart disease at the end of the story is technically fitting, as seeing Brently likely shocked Louise to death, as well as a loss of happiness. Essentially, Louise’s heart condition symbolized her depression linked to married. Its withered state symbolized her withering freedom, and once she realized she would never be free, her heart ceased to beat in a grand display of dramatic irony.
Crying, typically a signifier of unhappiness, sorrow, or regret, is a focal point throughout The Story of an Hour. Louise spends much of the story thinking about crying, or actually crying, and the reader is finally able to notice she only consoles herself out of tears when she thinks about her freedom. Once more, marriage is a cage she is stuck in, and it is so miserable it drives her to tears for most of the story. Marriage with Brently is so painful, dull, and depressing that sobbing has become a normal part of Louise’s day, however she is still sane enough to understand that if she were single and free, she would not cry or be upset. She recognizes the difference. Crying, then, swiftly becomes a metaphor for the trap marriage has become. The only instance wherein we see Louise cry without the presence of marriage bearing down on her consciousness is when she learns of Brently’s death. She cries, allowing for her friends to get the wrong idea about her feelings toward her husband, and continues to cry in solitude as she thinks about Brently’s funeral, but as the funeral ends in what amounts to more of a fantasy than a vision, her crying subsides permanently and gives way to utter euphoria at the idea of her life as an independent woman, free from the shackles of another person weighing her down. Chopin expertly uses crying as a metaphor to symbolize both the sadness represented by Louise’s marriage, as well as the happiness she feels when it is gone.
In sum, The Story of an Hour is not a romantic story, but a story of a woman heartbroken and trapped in a marriage. She may have loved Brently once, but now she is miserable, and seeking an escape. Through the use of symbolism, dramatic irony, and metaphor, Chopin shows us just how rusty and small the cage of marriage has become for poor Louise. In the end, when it is revealed that Louise is still trapped in marriage, it is so devastating to her that it kills her, proving just how unhappy she was.
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." n.d.
Lefebvre, Henry. Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment. 2014. 25 May 2016. <http://muse.jhu.edu/book/34309>.
Lodge, David. The Modes of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Typology of Modern Literature. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015. Print.
