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.

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.

Figures of Speech

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.

What's in a Name?

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.

Louise Mallard - A woman whose husband is reportedly killed in a train accident. When Louise hears the news, she is secretly happy because she is now free. She is filled with a new lust for life, and although she usually loved her husband, she cherishes her newfound independence even more. She has a heart attack when her husband, alive after all, comes home.

Read an in-depth analysis of Louise Mallard.

Brently Mallard - Louise’s husband, supposedly killed in a train accident. Although Louise remembers Brently as a kind and loving man, merely being married to him also made him an oppressive factor in her life. Brently arrives home unaware that there had been a train accident.

Josephine - Louise’s sister. Josephine informs Louise about Brently’s death.

Richards - Brently’s friend. Richards learns about the train accident and Brently’s death at the newspaper office, and he is there when Josephine tells the news to Louise.

An intelligent, independent woman, Louise Mallard understands the “right” way for women to behave, but her internal thoughts and feelings are anything but correct. When her sister announces that Brently has died, Louise cries dramatically rather than feeling numb, as she knows many other women would. Her violent reaction immediately shows that she is an emotional, demonstrative woman. She knows that she should grieve for Brently and fear for her own future, but instead she feels elation at her newfound independence. Louise is not cruel and knows that she’ll cry over Brently’s dead body when the time comes. But when she is out of others’ sight, her private thoughts are of her own life and the opportunities that await her, which she feels have just brightened considerably.

Louise suffers from a heart problem, which indicates the extent to which she feels that marriage has oppressed her. The vague label Chopin gives to Louise’s problem—“heart trouble”—suggests that this trouble is both physical and emotional, a problem both within her body and with her relationship to Brently. In the hour during which Louise believes Brently is dead, her heart beats strongly—indeed, Louise feels her new independence physically. Alone in her room, her heart races, and her whole body feels warm. She spreads her arms open, symbolically welcoming her new life. “Body and soul free!” she repeats to herself, a statement that shows how total her new independence really is for her. Only when Brently walks in does her “heart trouble” reappear, and this trouble is so acute that it kills her. The irony of the ending is that Louise doesn’t die of joy as the doctors claim but actually from the loss of joy. Brently’s death gave her a glimpse of a new life, and when that new life is swiftly taken away, the shock and disappointment kill her.

She sits in a big chair that faces out an open window. As she does, she feels a weight begin to press down on her. This is the figurative burial of the old Louise. The author writes“Into this (chair) she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body andseemed to reach into her soul (Chopin 527).” The use of the word “pressed” is a deliberateattempt by the author to both express the heaviness of the situation and to move the tensionalong. The transformation is beginning.As she sits in her chair and feels the enormous weight, feels the burial under the burden

of emotion, the next paragraph shows us that even in this darkness there is light. “She could seein the open square before her house the tops of tress that were all aquiver with the new spring life(Chopin 527).” The phrasing of the story starts to subtly change from dark and dour to a moreupbeat and positive note. In a sense, this also echoes Louise’s change as well. She istransforming from repressed, unassuming housewife to fully realized, independent woman. Sheis starting to see the path she can walk and starting to have hope for the future. She understandsthat her life in transforming but cannot, yet, quite complete the change.Patches of blue start to show through the cloudy, gray sky and she begins to cry. Herethe author piles on even more emotion, building the tension even more. “She sat with her headthrown back upon the cushion of her chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up to her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dream.(Chopin 528).”But as she sits there sobbing, there is something coming towards her. It is her new life – her new, unencumbered, unfettered, and free life. She is no longer the repressed unassumingwife of Brently Mallard. She is off that path. She is off the path chosen for her by society.This invokes a physical response from her. “Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously”and “her pulse beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.(Chopin 528).” No longer would she have to compromise. The dark moments were over. Her new path was free. “She said it over and over and over under her breath, ‘free, free, free!(Chopin 527).”She finally exits the room at the behest of a worried Josephine who has been outside

knocking. As Louise exits she is reborn. “There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and shecarried herself unwittingly like a Goddess of Victory (Chopin 528).” As a new woman, she nolonger does what society expects of her. She is empowered and self-assured. She is, in a sense,the model of modern feminism at this point.However, this course of action is not for the timid. It will come with a steep price. Wewatch as Louise and Josephine descend the stairs, “She clasped her sister’s waist, and toghether they descended the stairs. (Chopin 528).” Upon reaching the bottom, the new life Louise had just discovered came to an abrupt end. Society, in its seemingly endless capacity for stability,reaches up and punishes her for daring to strike out on her own. As Brently, the supposedly deadhusband re-enters the house, Louise drops dead. While we are left with some ambiguity as towhat actually caused her death, I think it is safe to assume it was the reappearance of her husband. In the late 1890s, an unattached woman was not going to fly.We have looked at several aspects of this story. From the role of Kate Chopin in modernfeminism to the how the effect of her husband dying causes a profound change in the protagonist; to the themes of death and rebirth as a symbolic gesture towards feminism, weunderstand now that Louise is every person struggling to live a life they didn’t necessarilychoose for themselves. For every person who has opted to trade their individualism and sense of self for a warm place to sleep and sense of belonging can find a little bit of themselves withinLouise Mallard. Yet, even as she represents the change that can occur with self-realization, itcomes with a price. Ultimately, our protagonist dies, living behind a sense of bewilderment andconfusion as we struggle to maintain our balance of individualism and our sense of duty

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 927