"The Story of an Hour"

Kate Chopin’s use of imagery in her short story “The Story of an Hour” greatly enhances the theme of marriage being an ultimate sacrifice of freedom and absolute happiness. Authors often include descriptions of nature which reflect the tone or mood of the characters in their stories in their works; for example, this technique was employed by Mary Shelley in her novel Frankenstein. Kate Chopin uses a similar technique in “The Story of an Hour,” but with a few modifications. At the beginning of the story, I made the premature assumption that Mrs. Mallard would be devastated to hear the news of her husband’s tragic death in a railroad accident; in accordance with this assumption, I also expected Chopin to describe the weather as rainy, story, overcast, etc. to reflect the mood of Mrs. Mallard after such a horrific loss. Therefore, when Chopin writes in detail about the beautiful spring day Mrs. Mallard observes out her window, I was reasonably surprised and found the beauty and liveliness of the spring day to be in stark contrast to the tone of story. However, after Mrs. Mallard recovers from a brief period of numbness and shock, she immediately becomes exhilarated by the idea of the freedom which she will gain through the loss of her husband. She confesses to having never loved him extensively and to hoping for a quick end to her dreary life as it was before Mr. Mallard’s death. Her true emotions toward the loss of her husband were not that of pain or grief as the reader might expect, but rather of delight and excitement for the freedom which she had so unexpectedly attained. Consequently, I discovered that the imagery of the beautiful and lively spring day did not serve as a direct contrast to the stark misery of her heart in order to emphasize her pain, but rather it served the purpose of reflecting her inner joy. Chopin’s imagery was symbolic of the birth of new life that Mrs. Mallard believed she had acquired. The imagery was not a reflection of love, as I might have expected; instead, the imagery was a reflection of her freedom. This imagery therefore reflects the theme of the novel, as well, which was also of freedom rather than love, which can be seen in Mrs. Mallard’s statement: “What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being” (Chopin, 327). Ultimately, Chopin’s use of imagery in this short story greatly enhanced the overall meaning of her work altogether.