The Story of an Hour

1. ?The Story of an Hour? belongs to the belles-lettres functional style, the main aim of which is to give the readers aesthetic pleasure, to make them think and to entertain them by appealing to their emotions. It is rather a psychological short story because it deals predominantly with the emotions and the inner state of the protagonist.

2. It is told in the third person, from the viewpoint of an omniscient anonymous narrator. Dialogue is practically absent, often the author?s narrative is interspersed with insertions of reported inner speech, revealing the protagonist s psychological and emotional state: What was it? She did not know, it was too subtle and elusive to name...

Reported inner speech combines in itself the features ol author?s narrative (such as the use of the third person) and the structure and prosody of the character?s direct speech (clipped sentences, interrogative sentences), as well as modal words (yet, too). The use of various types of narrative allows the author to create plausible characters.

3. Contributing to this is also the chronotope of the text. The scene is laid in the house of the Mallards: suggestive of it are such spatial markers as her room; the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair, her house. Through the open window Louise sees the open square before her house, the tops of the trees, the street below, patches of blue sky, clouds... in the west facing her window. The closed space of her room is opposed to the open space she sees through the window, the first signifying repression, the latter ? absolute freedom.

4. The temporal continuum in the text is presented by both direct and indirect markers. The noun hour in the title is suggestive of the stretch of time, during which the events described in the short story are developing. The time of the day is not mentioned directly, but can be guessed through such implying details as peddler... crying his wares, countless sparrows twittering in the eaves, blue sky clouds: evidently it is between the morning and the noon. The season (spring) is endowed with a symbolic function: spring is the time of hopes and great expectations.

5. Epithets are used to emphasize the sensation grows: Her eyes become keen and bright (epithets), her perception is clear and exalted (epithets), her pulses beat fast, the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body (an extended metaphor combined with a hyperbole).

The peak of the protagonist?s emotions is rendered by means of a simile: She carried herself ... like a Goddess of Victory and metaphor: She was drinking in a very elixir of life.

Metaphors perform important functions in the story. The delicious breath of rain was in the air.

Initially Mrs. Mallard is overwhelmed and stunned by the news and her husband?s death:

?When the storm of griefhad spent itself she went away to her room alone?; But then she begins to realize that much more pleasant future is unclosing before her eyes:

?There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.?

The highest moment of triumph of her independence is shown in the metaphor: ? No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.?

6. The open window in Louise?s room plays the role of an important implying detail: everything she sees, hears and smells through the open window is suggestive of a new spring life, of a promise of a better, happier life for Louise. The open window forms a kind of border between Louise?s past life of an unhappy married woman and a possibility of a happy life in which she would be free and there would be no powerful will bending her. The closed space of her room is opposed to the open space she sees through the window, the first signifying repression, the latter ? absolute freedom.

7. The story is deeply ironic. Louise?s happiness is but brief. At the moment of illumination and triumph her unsuspecting husband who had been farfrom the scene ofaccident enters the house. Louise?s sister and her husband's friend aware of Louise?s weak heart try to screen him from the view of his wife, but it is too late. The blow is too strong and unexpected ? Louise dies an instant death. The story?s bitter irony is in its last sentence: When the doctors came they said that she died of heart disease ? of joy that kills. The reader however, understands that what killed her was not joy ? it was shock, grief, frustration of hopes, combined. The word joy here acquires the contextual meaning opposite to its dictionary meaning.

8. The most recurrent words of the story arc free and life(live), each repeated five times. They gradually acquire the status of the key words revealing the protagonist's idea of happiness and the message of the story: to live happily is to be free, otherwise life is unbearable and senseless.

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 242