A Monstrous Joy

A close read of The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin

Linked is the short story The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin. It’s only about 1,000 words. It will be the topic of today’s essay.

Carl Holsoe, Waiting by the Window, 1863

I want to examine this short story in terms of its foreshadowing, imagery, and the ambiguous character of Richards.

We start with an opening line that masterfully explains everything you need to know in 28 words.

“Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.”

In this line we learn that Mrs. Mallard is married, her husband is dead, and she is sick. But we also learn that she is treated delicately and is seen as fragile in her acquantice’s eyes. We learn right away that the people around her are making decisions about what is “best” for her, without her consultation.

In the third paragraph we get our first concrete piece of foreshadowing. When Mrs. Mallard hears the news, “she wept at once.” When faced with her husband’s death, she does not, as so many do, struggle with the “inability to accept its significance.” Not only does she weep, but she weeps with “wild abandonment.” Already the language is establishing the contrast between the constraints of her life before and the freedom of her life now. To further establish Mrs. Mallard taking the reins of her life, she stops crying and quickly retreats to her room and “would have no one follow her.” She is establishing boundaries, curating her environment, and making decisions on her own.

When in her room, the imagery chosen reflects her new state of being. The chair she collapses into is “comfortable, roomy.” Out the window she sees trees “aquiver with the new spring life.” The rain is not oppressive or dour, but “delicious.” Outside someone is singing and the birds are chirping. Most importantly,

“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 clouds, thick and oppressive in the west, are slowly parting to reveal patches of blue sky. As Mrs. Mallard sits in her comfortable chair, she stares dreamlike out the window and her “gaze was fixed… on one of those patches of blue.”

She cannot move from the spot. Her mind is empty. She is “pressed down by a physical exhaustion” and her face “bespoke repression and even a certain strength.” She has been carrying a weight that has made her strong, but now something is changing. She thinks, “there was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully.” Her life has just changed drastically and the course of her remaining days just shifted, but the dust hasn’t cleared enough for her to fully grasp what it all means.

Finally that thing arrives and manifests itself as speech. Mrs. Mallard whispers, “free, free, free!”

Now that she has seen the thing plainly, “the vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes.” She is no longer afraid! Her eyes are “keen and bright.” She is warmed and relaxed and overcome by what may be a “monstrous joy,” but the joy is so powerful she doesn't care to find out its character.

After this moment of ecstasy, she dips for a moment back into reality. She thinks of her husband who “had never looked save with love upon her” and knows that she will cry at the funeral. But she can see “beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely.” She welcomes these days with open arms. She will be free of expectations. She will live only for herself. She will make decisions for herself. She will not suffer under the “blind persistence” of those that love her but nonetheless “impose a private will” upon her.

She momentarily weighs the merits of love against that of freedom and concludes “what could love… count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion.” What matters to her is that she is free, “body and soul.”

As she sits in her room she declares that she is “drinking the elixir of life through that open window.” The window where the clouds are parting and the blue sky is shining through. She is already – in her mind – living out those long, free days unbound by anyone. She quickly, and ominously, says a prayer, “that life might be long.”

She finally opens the door to her room, reentering the world as a free woman feeling a “feverish triumph” and walks down the stairs. The door opens unexpectedly and in walks Brently Mallard alive and well. When Mrs. Mallard sees him – and the imagined life she had already been living in her mind crashes down around her – she dies.

Quickly, I want to circle make and point out an interesting side plot that bookends this story. In the second paragraph, we learn that Richards (Mr. Mallard’s friend) was the one who learned of Mallard’s supposed death via telegram. He took only the time to “assure himself of [the death’s] truth with a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.”

This may not flag on a first read, but going back there are clues that hint at something nefarious going on. Why would Chopin spend most of a paragraph, in a story so brief, at the very opening, on a character that never speaks and, presumably, has no impact on the story? Why not have the sister be the one who hears the news and therefore trim the extra character (Richards) and make the already streamlined story even more focused? There must be a reason Richards was added as a character. And the answer, I think, can be found in the close of the story. When Mr. Mallard makes his surprise return, Richards makes a “quick motion to screen [Mr. Mallard] from the view of his wife.” Not only that, but in a story with just over 20 paragraphs, Chopin spends one to single out the line “But Richards was too late.” That is the whole paragraph. It is placed somewhat strangely at the final, climactic moment’s of the story. It serves only, I think, to signal out Richards’ action.

Why did he try to block Mr. Mallard from the view of his wife? What instinct took over in that moment that led to such a strange decision? He may explain – much like it was explained at the opening of the story – that he hoped to prevent a shock coming to Mrs. Mallard. To “gently as possible” break the news to Mrs. Mallard that her husband was not actually dead. But I think Chopin is hinting at another scenario.

In the alternative ending in which Mr. Mallard really had died and Mrs. Mallard excitedly begins her life as a free woman, I believe Richards would attempt to replace Mr. Mallard. Whether he’d do so out of love doesn’t matter, because the result for Mrs. Mallard would be the revocation of the freedoms she’d so recently acquired. In this alternate ending, the dark clouds would gather again and the blue sky would fade from view. Mrs. Mallard would once again find herself in a prison designed and guarded by well-meaning people.

Come back next week and we’ll discuss A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift.