I read the Story of an Hour, and I have to say that it for sure was interesting. It’s about a woman, Mrs. Mallard, who’s sister Josephine comes to tell her that her husband has died in an accident. The sister tells it carefully, because Mrs. Mallard has problems with her heart. After some time alone, Mrs. Mallard and her sister go to the down stairs and right then Mr. Mallard comes in of the door. He hadn’t even been where the accident had taken place. And apparently, Mrs. Mallard has an heart attack and dies of joy.
Since the story goes mainly around Mrs. Mallard, I’m going to tell about her. She’s young and has some kind of strong features, even though she now had quite of a blank expression on. And I’m not sure if I really understood, but it seems that she seemed a bit delighted by the so called death of his husband. She thought that she was free and could do anything that she wanted. Not that she hadn’t loved her husband, because she had, but it didn’t really matter.
I don’t know but to me it seems that she’s a bit cold hearted, even if it’s joy that she dies of.
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May 28, 2012 at 9:15 pm
Ms Leino
Good
The irony lies in the horrible truth that she does NOT die of joy that kills, but in fact of shock because her husband is alive after all. She had already embraced the idea that he was dead and (as you suggested) had a taste freedom. It’s a wonderful sensation!
For a deeper analysis, I would have tried to explain WHY she feels joy even though her husband is gentle and nice. Keep in mind that the story is over a hundred years old and written in a time when married women had to please their husbands and stay at home. The story is set in a house that is like a cage. She is young and healthy, the husband older. When she sits in her room, she hears birds singing from an open window symbolizing the incredibly wonderful feeling of what it is like to live life without the constraints of marriage, free as a bird. Chopin was a feminist through and through.
Next time do a little bit of background research and you might find the story even more intriguing! You scraped the surface well and managed to decipher a pretty old-fashioned text that many find hard to read.
– whoSE (who’s = kuka on)
– tells HER carefully (the verb requires an object!)
– no comma before ‘because’
– A heart attack (sana alkaa konsonantilla = A)
– the story REVOLVES around Mrs. Mallard