Steve Epting
AP English
“The Story of an Hour” Literary Response
This short story, of a woman named Mrs. Mallard, expressed her true happiness of freedom. In this story, freedom is explained as her not having to care for her husband anymore. Her family thought that they needed to break it down to her gently that her husband had died; but she didn’t feel that bad about it. A burden had been lifted off of her.
After the news had been to her, she left and went in another room to be alone. She began to think about the situation more and more. The text says that, “she was sitting in a chair with a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.” She was in profound thought. She felt something coming to her, and all of a sudden she realized that she was free. She kept mumbling the word free to herself. As she kept thinking about it she realized that she will have a bunch of time to herself.
The husband, Mr. Mallard, must have treated her wrong for her to react this way. All she could think about was the ample amount of time that she was going to have all to herself. “Into this (chair) she sank, pressed down by physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul. Mrs. Mallard had heart trouble and after a while, when she got the news she didn’t even consider her ailment. In this text, there were an abundance of descriptive adjectives that described her feelings. An example is when she was sitting in her room looking out the window and the smell of the rain was described as delicious breath.
In conclusion, the main character experienced freedom in this story. She is beginning to start having time for herself. When she whispered the words,”Free! Body and soul free!, she was breaking out of her devoted shell.