Grade 9 Analysis of The Story of an Hour

So, the first thing you're going to want to know is what happens basically in the story. What is it about? The basic idea is you've got a main character called Mrs. Mallard and her husband, Brent Mallard, is supposedly killed in a railway incident. Now, Mrs. Mallard has heart trouble, so her friend tries to tell her very gently about this, but she still feels a really kind of strong response. She feels a strong sense of grief when her husband first dies, and she leaves her friends and goes to be alone in a room. When she's alone in this room, that is when she actually realizes part of her is happy. Really happy. Because she is now free. She can now have independence, and she reflects on how marriage is this

kind of really oppressive system for both the husband and the wife, because even though she loved her husband, it means that you're never truly independent and free in your own. You're always in service to someone else. So, Mrs. Mallard is feeling reinvigorated, really happy about life. So, she leaves this room to go back downstairs to her friends, and that is when Mr. Mallard, who isn't dead, it turns out, and had no idea about the railroad accident, was nowhere near it, he comes home. And just on the sight, the shock and surprise of seeing him, Mrs. Mallard dies. And why exactly she dies is something completely up for debate and what we'll be going through here, but technically, it's the heart trouble

that she dies from. So, that's the basic idea of what happens in the story of an hour. What I'm going to tell you about now is the context. Now, I usually leave context for last, but the context is so important here that it's actually what we're going to look at first. So the context of "Story of an Hour" is written in 1890, I want to say four or maybe 96, 1890s for sure, by a writer called Kate Again, okay, I How would you pronounce her surname? C H O P I N. For me, that sounds French. I'm tempted to do like put on a slight French accent and go Chopar or just like completely butcher it with my English accent and go Kate Chopin. I'm going to settle somewhere in the middle, Kate Chopin. I That's her name anyway.

I'm going on so many tangents today. She was writing this story in 1890s. Now, she is awesome because she was almost like a feminist writer before feminism existed, okay? Feminism Well, it's not true. Feminism does exist by this point. Mary Wollstonecraft has written, you know, her big novel about not novel, her big essay on this. But it is very, very early stages. It's certainly not a global movement in the the 1890s yet. The suffrage movement and all of that kind of stuff is very much still to come. She [snorts] is very much writing in a pre-feminism era. And yet, her work always had a common kind of theme of women who were different, women who kind of worked against the system, who wanted freedom, who wanted independence.

And she is writing as a married woman herself in 19th century herself in Louisiana, USA. So she's really heavily inspired by the context of the time that she is writing in. So to understand that context of the time, we need to find out a little bit about you know, women's rights in this time period. Now, it's important to understand that women didn't have many rights in this time period, full stop, with things like you know, they could vote and things like that. However, it's really important to note that women's rights actually, which were pretty low-level to begin with, colossally declined when she got married. So much so that it was known there was like a saying in Louisiana in 19th century America

that it was like civil death, legal death, because of how much a woman was giving up in order to get married. Once a woman got married, she could no longer own any property. If she owned property before being married, it became her husband's and she could no longer own property ever again. She had no control over her finances. Any money that she had before she got married became her husband's. She was no longer allowed any money that she earned while married was not allowed to be hers to choose how to spend. It was under complete control of her husband. Husband has the final say on everything, property and finances. Not only that, does the husband have all of that control, but getting out of that

is incredibly difficult because divorce was rare and societally societally unacceptable. So, part of what has massively inspired the writer for this story, notice how I called her the writer, I'm just going to like avoid trying to say her surname. What has massively inspired her in this story is this situation, okay? This reality for women of her time. And that is what she is massively exploring when we think about the themes of Story of an Hour. Because these themes, and again, as per usual whenever I talk about themes in a text, they are all heavily interlinked. One of the first big themes we've got is freedom. I know, what does how how important is freedom to a person? We've also got identity, specifically identity of like

women, what makes up their identity, who are they, what they got. Marriage, again linked to that, and what marriage is like as an institution, how it limits your freedom, and how oppressive it is. The role of women, because they are oppressed, they lack freedom, their identity is kind of subsumed by their husband. That means that like is lost in, it becomes part of their husband. And marriage, again, is very oppressive for women, as well. And then, time. Now, this is an interesting one, okay, because on the one hand you think, "Oh yeah, obviously time is a theme to this. It's called The Story of an Hour." And therefore, it's about that very kind of brief moment of freedom that Mrs. Mallard gets to

experience. And I have read about time as being a theme of A Story of an Hour. But, here's my argument, and you can comment and tell me what you think, but I don't feel like the writer is explicitly trying to explore the concept of time itself. I feel like it's called The Story of an Hour, and we have this focus on time, not because time is the point, but the tiny, fleeting moment of freedom for women is the point. So, I've put this on here because other sources have referenced time as a theme, but I'm struggling to see what the argument would be for what this theme is. And if you have ideas, make sure you tell me, because you're I have no doubt just going to like blow my mind with your incredible ideas.

But, the main thing I think is being explored in this story is essentially freedom, marriage, and being a woman. And the three are all interlinked, because essentially, women in marriage have no freedom. That's your basic idea for the themes of this story. What we're going to do now is start looking at the the analysis of the story. Now, because it's a short story, I'm not going to go through every single word by word and tell you absolutely everything because that would be a waste of time. We want to look for the stuff that's purposeful. The stuff that really is going to have an effect and is essential to exploring these themes. So, let's start doing that. I'm not going to read the entire story

because it would just like take a while. So, if you want to be If you want to have a look at the full story, then just follow the link that I've put in the description. That'll take you to a copy of the full story. Instead, what I've done is I've chunked the story into different parts and I'm going to start kind of analyzing the different significant things, language and structure-wise, going on in those parts. So, in this very, very opening section of the story, the very first sentence, we're told that Mrs. Mallard is afflicted with heart trouble. Now, that image of that idea of her having heart trouble, we have to view from two angles. First angle, when we're at the very start of the story, we don't yet

know its themes, we don't yet know its ideas. And then also, how we can view it once we do know more, once we do know Mrs. Mallard's character and the kind of significance, the deeper significance of this heart trouble. So, in that sense, there's two ways of thinking about it. On the one hand, at the very beginning of the text, when you don't know that this is a story all about women and the oppressiveness of marriage, you don't know any of that, you just know that she's afflicted with heart trouble. What that does is it foregrounds her feminine role. Okay? It lives up to the expectations of what you think a woman is going to be like. She is physically weak and because the heart is often symbolic

of emotions, we would also perhaps infer from that emotionally weak as well. So, we see that happening quite a bit in this opening section. A lot of suggestions of Mrs. Mallard being treated in a particular way because of her being a woman and her needing to have that soft touch. For example, the adverb of gently that's used to describe how the news of her husband's death is told to her. The fact that her sister Josephine speaks to her in veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. So, that kind of metaphor of of veiled hints as if, you know, they're trying to speak euphemistically or not really tell her everything, really shows that protective nature that they have over her. We've also got things like later down in this

section when she has found out about her husband's death, the description of her weeping and doing so with wild abandonment. So, the weeping obviously fits in with the idea of women being really emotional and the wild abandonment, that lack of control over themselves as well. Women can't control their emotions, either. So, all of that, we've got lots in this opening section of foregrounding like, yes, Mrs. Mallard is your bog-standard typical woman. Look at her with her weak physical health and weak, you know, emotional strength as well. On the other hand, once we've gotten more of the story and we start to realize that this is about the oppressiveness of marriage, suddenly the heart trouble takes on a huge symbolic

significance and it becomes a symbol of the emotional conflict that she is experiencing. So, this heart trouble is not just a physical thing, it's an emotional thing. It's an emotional trouble that she has. And we'll go into more detail as we read more of the text later on of exactly what is that emotional conflict that it is that she's going through. But, at this point, I just want to really stress the fact that that that fact that she has heart trouble is symbolic of something deeper. Another thing that we've got going on in this section is when we're told that she did not hear the story as many women have heard the same with a paralyzed inability to accept its insignificance. Now, there's multiple interpretations

that we can have from that. First of all, if we want to think about the crafting going on, is the use of third-person narrator, okay? The use of third-person narrator is allowing the narrator to give us an understanding of Mrs. Mallard in comparison to wider society. And that is what that sentence is about, comparing Mrs. Mallard to other women. And what that sentence does is it foregrounds how she is different to other women. But, there's a question here of how we can interpret that difference. What is it about Mrs. Mallard that means she doesn't hear have the the paralyzed inability to accept its insignificance, and instead she weeps at once? Is it that she's even more of a typical woman than most women, so she responds

even more emotionally than most women? Is it that she's more in tune with her emotions, and therefore is able to feel her grief more kind of uh strongly and immediately? Or is it that perhaps she's so ready to accept his death, she doesn't have that paralyzed inability not to accept it. She's ready to accept it, and therefore she feels the sadness straight away. There's lots of potential different reasons there with different um kind of consequences based on those different interpretations. For example, if we're saying that the significance behind that line is that it makes Mrs. Mallard come across as more feminine. She's more of a typical woman of the time than most women of the time. Why is that important? Why does that

matter structurally? Well, if we think about the fact that later on in this story, she's going to experience her freedom and love it, and she is like the typical woman, then that would suggest the universality of the issue that this story explores. If a woman's woman like Mrs. Mallard can be glad her husband is dead because of the freedom and independence it gives her, well, that should mean that all women would feel that way because for all women who are more or less than a woman of Mrs. Mallard will experience that feeling of like, man, I wish I could be free of my husband and I wish I could experience that independence. If we're saying it's that she's more in tune with her emotions, perhaps then what uh the writer is

trying to suggest that here is an explanation as to why Mrs. Mallard has that emotional conflict because she is so much more aware of the complexity of her feelings than most women. When most women are kind of blinded and unable to see the reality of what the the the oppressiveness of marriage and the lack of freedom that they have, Mrs. Mallard sees. Uh you know, to use the the modern lingo, Mrs. Mallard would be woke while everybody else is fast asleep. Okay? So, it's this idea that Mrs. Mallard is perhaps much more aware of what she's feeling and able to engage with her feelings much easier than most women can. And that explains why later on in the story, she's going to be able to dig into those

complex feelings that she's going to have about loving a husband but also loving freedom at the same time. The ready to accept his death one, well, that would perhaps suggest the immediate sense of freedom that she wants from the very get-go, right? Because it's like her instinctive response of being so ready to accept his death, so ready to grieve for him is perhaps a hint at the unhappiness of the marriage or at least at on how unhappy she was, cuz she certainly talked later about how she loved her husband and her husband loved her. So, it's an unhappiness not from but because of her husband behaving in a particular way, but an unhappiness that comes just from marriage being the way that it is,

marriage being the oppressive beast that it is. So, lots of different potential interpretations there, and it's really important to remember we're dealing with English here. There isn't one set right answer. We want to engage with those multiple interpretations. We want to dig in and be like, "Ooh, okay, so you could argue this, but you could also argue this, but you could also argue this." We want to lean into that. Don't be afraid of there being multiple answers. Lean in and just love the the multiple answer life there. Linked to that, we've got if I go back again to that wild abandonment wild abandonment description of how she initially grieves for her husband. So, we've already talked about how the fact

that it was sudden and it was wild fits in with that idea of her being like a typical woman who lacks control. She can't control her emotions, and therefore she feels her grief in an untamed wild way. That's what the kind of connotations to wild are. On the other hand, again, multiple interpretations here, is that wild again a suggestion of freedom? That suggestion of she has within her that natural instinctive way of being, which is to be free. And that comes across in her emotions, because her emotions are the most kind of natural instinctive thing about her, and the way she feels is to be to feel it with a sense of freedom about her. She doesn't feel she her emotions in like a controlled way. She lets her

freedom She lets her freedoms She lets her emotions run free. Again, interesting when we think about how that wild abandonment abandonment phrase fits with the ideas, the different potential interpretations of why we're told that Mrs. Mallard is different from other women. And again, the plot thickens when we then have that metaphor of the storm of grief had spent itself and she went away to her room. Now, of course, that's a metaphor of the storm of grief. And storms are obviously, you know, very intense weather that would suggest that the intense level of grief that she is feeling. However, the phrase is spent itself. So, it's fitting with the idea of like, you know, a storm is brief. It's there and

then it goes. So, does that mean then that her grief was intense but fleeting? And is that going to support the idea that she was ready to accept his death because she's kind of she appears to have almost gotten over it. Well, not gotten over it in the sense of she doesn't care anymore, but she's past the worst of her grief already. Another thing that I think is interesting here is that grammar. The storm of grief had spent itself, she went away to her room alone. It's almost like the grief is being talked about separately from her. The The grief had spent itself. It's got its own pronoun. And once that's done, she went away to her room alone. So, it's almost the grammar of it makes it seem as if that intense grief that

she's feeling was not something true to who she was. It was not part of her. It was almost separate from her. So, does that support the idea of perhaps she was ready to accept his death and that's why she's been able to kind of distance herself from it already. Linked to that again, that description of her going to her room alone and having nobody following her. So, if we think again about the crafting, we've got the writer's focus here. The writer's focus is on her. It's on her decisions and on her actions. And what those actions are, what those decisions are, is for her to be alone, which of course represents that independence. She would have no one follow her. Her control. So, the grief is gone now. The grief

where we said that there was a sense of a lack of control has gone. And now suddenly she is in control. She is choosing to have no one follow her. That verb, she would have no one follow her. She is making the decision. She is in control. So, what's happened here? If wild abandonment is conveying a lack of control and she would have no one follow her control in her decision-making, how has that change happened? What's happened here? And again, we can come back to those really different ways of interpreting this situation. Is it that she was ready to accept her husband's death? And so as soon as she has accepted it, she's read already starting to move into that sense of being more independent, starting to

be more in control, starting to be more free. Or is it that she was always like this to begin with? She always had a sense of uh freedom. She always had a sense of independence. The difference was just she didn't get to exhibit it before because she was married. And so that grief she felt was real, the sadness love she feels for her husband is real as is her capacity to want freedom, to have freedom, to want control, to have control. In this next section, we're dealing with Mrs. Mallard now alone in her room. And we're told that she's in a room with an open window and a comfortable roomy armchair. Now we've got to think about that setting description. That sounds like a nice room. That almost clashes

with the sad events we've had so far. So, there's a question there of is that setting acting as a kind of sympathetic background? Is the room comfy? Is the armchair comfortable and roomy because she feels comfortable alone? Is it roomy because she feels that sense of space and freedom that she's got now that she is alone? As for that open window, obviously open windows uh classically symbolize opportunity and freedom. So, again, is this all sympathetic background suggesting that Mrs. Mallard is already feeling comfortable with her isolation, comfortable with her independence and freedom? However, that's then interestingly juxtaposed against the next line. Into this she sank, pressed down by a

physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed into her soul. So, obviously we're dealing with, first of all, a line reinforcing our expectations of women, the fact that it's a physical exhaustion. Women are weak, physically weak, blah blah blah, whatever the crappy science was that they believed. That is again reinforcing Mrs. Mallard as a woman, she's fitting with those societal expectations. The writer is keeping that going because remember, that's important for us to think about that universality of what she's going to experience later in the story. So, structurally, the writer is constantly being like, she's a woman, she's a woman. LOOK HOW MUCH SHE'S LIKE a woman. And look what women want, people. So, this is an

important part structurally in the story. We've also got though the metaphor in this physical exhaustion. Um you could argue personification. I I put metaphor cuz it's like comparing her to a ghost uh with like the reaching into her soul, but you know, there'll be those that argue personification and I'm not going to quibble over that. Personification, metaphor, whatever. But it's pressing her down. It's haunting her body. It's reaching into her soul like a ghost that is in some way uh like controlling her. So, we've got to ask ourselves, what is that physical exhaustion? What is being compared to that ghostly behavior there? Is it the grief from love? Is that what she's feeling now? Is that the

exhaustion? She's exhausted from the strong emotions she's had as a result of grieving for a husband that she's loved? If so, that's some darn oppressive language that she is using to talk about the grief that she felt from love. Pressing her down. Reaching into her soul. The invasiveness of that. So, in that sense, we can ask ourselves, if that physical exhaustion is the grief from love, and if it's being described with such an oppressive metaphor, is that perhaps representative of how oppressive love is? Of how invasive love is. Certainly perhaps in the eyes of Mrs. Mallard, cuz remember our third-person narrative viewpoint is limited to her. So, in that sense, just as that description of that setting is

essentially a symbol of how she was uh perhaps feeling, so too can this personification be a comment on how she feels about the love that she had, the relationship we had she had with her husband. Now, of course, you could perhaps argue your multiple interpretations on the physical exhaustion. You have to let me know in the comments if you think that there is something else that the physical exhaustion could be. I'd really love to hear what you think there. But for me, I've heard it's about that grief from love because of that oppressive language that's being used to describe it. It's possible the physical exhaustion could be coming from just the sheer quantity of emotion she's feeling. Um it's not just about one specific

emotion, but again, that quantity, that conflict we haven't yet quite had introduced. The only emotion we've had introduced to us is the grief she feels from her husband's death. That's why I've gone grief from love. That's why I haven't linked this physical exhaustion to the sense of freedom she's going to feel in a bit. But anyway, you let me know what you think. What we then have is a description of what she can see out of the window. And this is where our sympathetic background just like hits new levels of just completely unsuttle. She's looking out her windows. We've got new spring life. We've got delicious breath of rain. Uh, that breath as if like, you know, it's it's the way rain refreshes places,

you know? You know what I'm talking about, right? You You know how nice the air smells after it's rained because things have just been like reinvigorated and released. Is that just me who likes that smell? I really like that smell. We've got the uh, sound of birds as well. How countless birds. We've got basically a constant symbols of freedom and opportunity. That's what we've basically got. And that is all acting again as that sympathetic background for how she's feeling. How she is feeling that sense of freedom opportunity. Keep in mind though, structurally, she hasn't realized that yet. In this section, she has not realized that that is what she's feeling. It's all there. It's all being suggested at, but she hasn't clued into

it herself yet. So, we've got to ask ourselves, well, what's the structural significance of that? Why almost like have us as a reader feel the freedom literally in the air before she even realizes what's going on. I'm going to put that question to you guys as well. Why do that? Why have her go through all of this before she's even explicitly realized? In fact, I think I might be answering that question in the next section, maybe. I don't know. We'll see. The next thing we have is this description of patches of uh blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met. So, on the one hand, of course, we've still got our symbolism of freedom. That's what the blue sky is all about, but it's coming

through patches of cloud. So, our cloud is obviously kind of symbolizing the you know, troubles, the difficulties, the challenges of life. The patches of blue sky are your opportunities like freedom. So, in that sense, our cloudy sky could be a symbol of life for women. It's full of those clouds. It's full of those um like limitations and challenges and difficulties, but it's also got its patches of opportunity. We're then told that she sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her as a child who quieted herself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams. So, she's obviously the way she's being described there with her head thrown

back quite motionless. That's reinforcing that physical exhaustion that we heard earlier. And then, of course, we then get this analogy of comparing her to a child. That's a classic move when describing women, um comparing them to children because again, under sexist ideology, women and children have a lot in common. That inability to control their emotions, the vulnerability, the need to have somebody that they need to be dependent on somebody, their innocence, all of that. So, comparing women to children, classic classic kind of imagery used um when trying to suggest you know, women being weak and vulnerable and all that kind of stuff. So, again, for reasons that I feel like I've said now a bajillion times, the writer is

reinforcing those expectations of Mrs. Mallard being, you know, your woman's woman, your typical woman of the time. This next section of the story, we now get a description of what Mrs. Mallard looks like. Young, fair, calm face whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. First of all, the young and fair, that's it again, classic reinforcing of expectations of your typical woman, okay? She's pretty and she's young. The reason I say that's typical, obviously women could be of various ages, but it's typical to present a woman positively by making her fair and making her young. Typically speaking, your evil women are old and haggard and witch-like. Your young and your fair are your

damsels and your princesses and your women that should be desired and wanted. Why is that structurally important? Same reason again for why um not Mrs. Mallard, why the writer keeps reinforcing our expectations of Mrs. Mallard being a typical woman. In a minute, she is going to want freedom. She's going to want independence. The writer can't have that feeling coming from an old crone so that the reader can be like, "Well, of course the old crone feels that way. She's just forgotten what a man's touch feels like." She needs to have this emotion happen in somebody young and in somebody beautiful. In a woman that society would deem more than acceptable. Because again, that's the universality of it. All women, young and beautiful,

they want to be free, man. Even the young ones, they just want to be free. What's interesting though, is that again, the writer is foreshadowing that oppression in the description of what she looks like. Because we're told the lines bespoke repression. So, the lines is like, you know, the lines on her face. I won't go so far as like wrinkles, but maybe, you know, frown lines or smile lines or, you know, the beginnings of the wrinkles that she's got considering that she's young. Now, here's the dictionary definition of repression. It's got two definitions. Firstly, uh this is from Collins Dictionary, by the way, the dictionary I always recommend, it's the best. Repression is the use of force to

restrict and control a society or other group of people. Repression of feelings, especially sexual ones, is a person's unwillingness to allow themselves to have natural feelings and desires. Isn't that interesting? Repression can be used for both talking about the oppression from outside of you, external oppression, people trying to control you and limit you and restrict you. But, it can also be the control and limitation and restriction of yourself, you doing it to yourself and trying to block your natural feelings. Why is that important? Two levels. Number one, the writer is suggesting at the repression from society, the repression that women experience being attempted with society trying to control them.

Number two, in a minute, we're going to see her try and repress her feelings. We're going to watch it happen. And you know what else we're going to watch happen? We're going to watch her fail to repress those feelings. So, when we come to that later, if I forget, I'm going to ask the question now. What's the significance of that being that the freedom, the desire for freedom, being the feeling she couldn't repress? And why couldn't she repress it? Is it now because her husband's dead? Is that why she can't repress it anymore? Or is it just it was never repressible repressible, is that word? It was never repressible to begin with. We're then told she even has a certain strength. Now, that word even, oh man,

is that annoying. She even has strength, guys. Oh my god. Totally a tone of surprise there that the woman has strength. Again, I'm not suggesting that the writer is trying to be like shocked a woman has strength. The writer knows what she's doing here. She's playing with a sexist society. She knows she's dealing with sexist readers. She's playing into their trap. She's lulling them into thinking, "Oh my god, this woman, look at these women. Look how weak. Look how, you know, Oh my god, they even have a little bit of strength to them. Isn't that cute?" All because in a minute she's going to do a complete 180 and make society realize how messed up things are. But right now, she's got that tone of

surprise coming from the word even holding a certain strength. And again, we've got to ask ourselves what kind of strength? We talking physical? We talking mental? I would argue emo- emotional or mental strength. The reason I would argue that is because the lines are in the face. Okay? This is lines in her face conveying a sense of strength. So, if the lines uh bespeak or bespoke repression, then it's like, you know, the the suggestion is they are a symbol of emotions she has experienced in her life and therefore the strength they've got is emotional strength as well. Why tell us all of that? Well, in the next sentence, we've got the "But now, but now there was a dull stare in her eyes whose gaze was fixed away off

yonder on one of those patches of blue sky." So, we've now got imagery suggesting she's completely emotionless. There's nothing going on. And we're explicitly told there's a suspension of intelligent thought. She ain't thinking. She's not feeling. She's not thinking. My question is, why? Why do that? Is it because the writer is again trying to reinforce expectations? Look at this woman. She can't handle emotions. It's overwhelmed her. So, now she just can't think or move or do anything. She is paralyzed as we were told in that like opening paragraph. She's paralyzed by the amount of emotion she's feeling. Or is it the writer preparing to defy expectations? [laughter and snorts] Because in a minute

Mrs. Mallard is going to experience that desire for freedom. And she's going to experience it when she wasn't trying to feel and she wasn't trying to think. So, she wasn't thinking and she wasn't trying to feel. Where's that feeling of freedom come from, then? It's come from somewhere deep within, somewhere instinctive, somewhere natural. And that's what we're going to get in the way that it's described in this next sentence. Well, we're going to get it in a minute, not yet. What we get first is some super ominous personification. There was something coming to her as she was waiting for it fearfully. What was it? She did not know. It was too subtle and elusive to name. So, before we get this kind of preparing

to defy expectations, we get this personification that creates, that builds our sense of fear, also builds a sense of suspense. Why do you do that? Well, this is our rising action, okay? If we think about the structure of a story, the rising action is when the writer is building up towards the climactic moment. And for our reader, again, remember, I keep talking as if, you know, you already know the emotion she's going to feel later is freedom. Our reader reading this for the first time doesn't yet know that. They have no idea that that is the emotion she's going to feel in a minute. So, for our reader reading this blind for the very first time, that what is it? She did not know. It's coming for

her. She's waiting for it fearfully. That's building some major suspense. What is it? What is it that she's feeling? And it's building that to that climax. It's also giving some hints, and this is what I was talking about earlier. She felt it creeping out of the sky. Remember how we said that sky symbolized freedom? Well, now that's where the this thing that's coming for her, that's where it's coming from. It's the sky. Remember how I said that the lack of thinking and the lack of feeling was perhaps a symbol of the feeling of freedom being natural and emotive and and instinctive? It's coming out of the sky, a place that's, you know, incredibly natural, I guess you could say. Uh the sky is naturally there

and natural imagery. And we're also told it's coming through the sounds, the sense, and the color. More natural imagery. We've also got that tricolon of the three different things, all sensory language, sound, uh something you can smell, something you can see, making it feel all powerful and all consuming. So, on the one hand, when you don't know the emotion that's coming is freedom, on the one hand, you get a major suspense being built. Ooh, what is it that's coming for her? Why is it coming out the sky? How is it coming from all of the setting around her? When you do know that that emotion is freedom, suddenly you see how it's so natural. It's coming from the environment. It's just It's the natural

way of being. It's everything about our world. It's in the sky. It's in the sounds. It's in the senses. It's in the color. It's in everything in our world that you just want to be free. So, again, there's two ways of reading this story. Before the climax, before you find out, as we're going to in this next paragraph, that she wants freedom, remember there's always two ways of interpreting things. How you interpret it as a fresh reader going in, no idea that that's what Mrs. Mallard's going to go through, and a wise and old reader who knows what that's what's going to go That's what she's going to go through and can therefore spot how the writer has built in clues going all the way through. If we look at that paragraph, where she

starts talking about uh the the feeling coming on to her. So, "Her bosom rose and fell tumultuously." So, that reference to her bosom, that's her chest. So, it's trying to remind us of that heart trouble, okay? Because tumultuously is like it's moving kind of unevenly um and and quickly and kind of all over the place. So, it's trying to echo back to that heart trouble. It's trying to make us feel concerned for her physical health. Because again, showing the power of this feeling that's coming for her, it's affecting her heart. Us as a reader who don't know what's coming, oh man, this must be bad. It's affecting her heart. This This is not going to go well. Us as a reader who knows it's freedom, dang, that freedom

is powerful. It's also making us connect the dots on the physical significance of that heart trouble of these symbolic significance, sorry, of that heart trouble. And how it represents that emotional conflict she's feeling. Because she's feeling she's fighting, right? She begins to recognize this thing that's approaching to possess her. Notice again that same kind of language we had before with the ghost and the haunting. She's using that oppressive language and she's striving to beat it back. So there's this continued personification of like a literal conflict. She is fighting against this emotion, but she can't because of her two slender hands. So there's Oh, I put that question in the wrong

place. Ignore that question for a second. I'm going to come back to that in a second. She's put her image of two white slender hands as a symbol of women, okay? Women having slender hands were seen as something that makes them desirable, makes them attractive. Then being white, again desirable, similar to the fat face, light skin was the you know, it was the the preferred look of the time. So that reference to the two white slender hands, it's symbolizing the kind of gentleness of women, the how they are objects of beauty, not strength. Again, reinforcing these expectations and being like, "Look, she can't fight back this emotion because she's a woman, okay?" So again, our reader who doesn't

know this is freedom yet, they're going to find out in two sentences. They don't know yet. They're thinking, "Oh, this poor woman. She she can't fight these emotions because she's a woman. Oh, the poor dear." And Mrs. Mallard herself is continuing this fight until she abandoned herself. Connotations of loss of control there. Similarly, in the whispered word escaping her slightly parted lips, whispered and slightly parted, that hesitancy that she's got to let this out combined with that verb of escaped, again, loss of control on her part and a to hesitancy to it. Why can I not say this word? Hesitancy to it. She doesn't want to let it out. And then what comes out is free free free. So, let's like rewind a second. Let's

reflect all this over over again. And I go back to that question that came up earlier that came up too soon because I bleeding messed up my my reveal orders. Why is she afraid and fighting this desire? We've just had this rising action acting as if there's like some kind of monster coming after her, some super powerful thing that she can't fight against, she's battling, but she can't fight against is coming after her. This monster is her happiness. That's the monster. Her happiness at being free. Why is that what she's afraid of? Why is that what she's fighting? If we think about the context of what we know of the time period, the sheer amount of sexism going on, is she afraid to accept that she is going to be different

from other women in society? Is she afraid of her own happiness because of what that means for her, of what that means of her place in society? Is she afraid because she doesn't know what that's going to be like? All questions we don't really get answers to. But it's still significant of why is she afraid? And the answer I would ultimately argue comes down to society. Soci- Society has made her afraid. Society has made women afraid of freedom because they don't get it. And then when we look back at that image again of as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. So, on the one hand, we've got this powerful emotion coming that we discover is freedom. Powerful, natural. That's what the desire for freedom is. It's

powerful and natural. And she can't fight it cuz she's a woman. Now, our reader before would have interpreted that whole two white slender hands, she can't fight it cuz she's a woman, she physically weak, right? But here's a new spin on it. She can't fight it because it's natural. And it's natural to a woman. That's why she can't fight it. Cuz it's natural. That's why she didn't have to think. That's why she didn't have to feel in order for this to take a hold of her. That is why this was the one feeling she couldn't repress because it's so damn powerful, because it's so damn natural, because it's so innate to all human beings. You can't stop it. And now I've got a song from a musical stuck in my head.

Do you know the musical Hairspray? I've got that song You Can't Stop the Beat stuck in my head. I feel like that song is is like a nice um theme tune for this story. Except, of course, Hairspray ends very happily, and this doesn't. But let's move on. Anyway. So, she has that hesitancy of saying the word, and when she finally says it, we get repetition, tricolon, and an exclamatory sentence, free, free, free. We've got this building of acceptance, realization, happiness coming through from the fact that she's saying that one single word over and over and over again. And exclamatory sentence conveying the passion with which she she is saying it. She's finally accepted what she's feeling, and that is free.

And that is when the language about her body massively changes. So, up to this point we've had this emotional conflict, this fear, this oppression, this battle. Now, the vacant stare and the look of terror that followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Remember eyes, classic symbols for how somebody's feeling, but also symbols of like their soul, their personality. And we're told they're keen and bright. We've got some laudatory connotations that completely contrasting what we had before. We've also got her pulses beat fast, so we're being made we're being reminded of her heart again. But instead of it beating fast like we had that image of tumultuously before, the speed image has

changed because now the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body. See those laudatory connotations again? Warmed and relaxed every inch of her body. Look at that metaphor of every inch of her body. It's affecting all of her. So what we're seeing is her heart trouble is a symbol of the emotional conflict that she feels feeling oppressed, feeling repressed, feeling trapped, feeling like she isn't free. When she's got that freedom, when she has accepted that freedom, everything's better. That heart trouble, essentially what the writer is implying here is that heart trouble is gone. Her heart is now supporting her body, is helping her body. It's not in trouble anymore. And when I say it's not in trouble

anymore, I'm not trying to suggest that the writer is saying the disease is gone because obviously in a little bit it's going to kill her, but I mean is in like the conflict is gone and therefore her issues have massively resolved. So now we look at her heart trouble so differently. Because before we thought of it as just a medical diagnosis. Now it's like a societal diagnosis. When you let women be free, look at how much it solves. Look at how [clears throat] much it fixes for them. How Look at how much it improves their lives. Isn't that freaking powerful? We've had the writer kind of give the hints, give the clues to build up to the climax. Now she's going to take a hammer and she's going to smash that message into

your brain until you get the bleeding idea. And we can see that because of how explicit the language is at this point about the love of freedom and the oppressive nature of marriage. Take to begin with that first sentence, she did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. Why say that? Why why would she stop to ask if a monstrous joy that held her? I would argue this is a an element of the narrator uh kind of almost trying to predict at the reader's feelings at this point, you know? There are going to be those in this sexist society that are thinking this is a monstrous joy. Well, not even necessarily because you're sexist, just because like, "Dang, woman, your husband just died and you're

this happy? Seriously? That's awful." This is a general human behavior. So, it's almost like the narrator is preempting the audience's response and responding to the audience's response. So, we get this sense that there is uh no logic to it, okay? She doesn't stop. She is not thinking through the I guess it's not even logic cuz it is ethics. She's not thinking through the ethics of how she feels. She's just feeling. And we're told that because it says a clear and exalted perception. Exalted is like really high levels of happiness and joy. And that is what is enabling her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. So, the sheer amount of happiness she is feeling allows her to ignore this attempt at looking at the kind of, you

know, uh unethicalness of it as being unimportant. And look at that verb enabled. It's like the freedom that she realized she had has made her really happy. And that happiness has given her more freedom. Freedom begets more freedom. Being free from her husband has given her more freedom to feel what she's feeling and to prioritize what she feels over what perhaps society would say she should be feeling. Society would say this is a monstrous joy. That's society's judgment. She dismisses that as trivial. Freedom is giving her more confidence to be more free with who she is and what she feels and accept that. She is still able though to acknowledge the complexity of the situation and that is again the rest of this paragraph is

like a defense against that reader thinking, "Oh, you monstrous woman, how can you feel this way?" Because she says she knew she would weep again when she saw the kind tender folded hands. Kind tender hands folded in death. So, the weep again obviously she's sad. That's what that is implying. She's going to grieve. The kind tender hands are her husband. Uh the writer here she's using a technique. Now, I can never remember how you pronounce this term. I hate trying to pronounce it. There is a film that I refuse to watch just because watching the film would require me to say this word loads of times to be like, "Hey, have you seen the film Synecdoche?" I'm pretty sure that's the pronunciation. Synecdoche.

I'm pretty sure that's it. Whatever. Synecdoche. I'm not I'm not doing too well with pronouncing words today, am I? Chopin, Synecdoche. I feel like there was another word I forgot. Anyway. Synecdoche is when you have a writer take one part of something and make that part represent the whole. Okay? So, in this case we've got the kind tender hands being used to represent the husband as a whole. Because if we think of hands representing like your being a metaphor for your actions, the fact that they're described with those laudatory adjectives of kind and tender. The synecdoche is representing the caring actions of the husband. He was a caring, loving husband. And we're told that explicitly in the next bit. The face

that had never looked save with love upon her. That means he only ever looked at her with love. So, what she's grieving is the fact that they did have a loving relationship. They did. And she's sad about that. And she's going to be sad about that when she sees him fixed and gray and dead. So, that tricolon of uh fixed, gray, dead. And then you could argue the syndetic listing as well and how that kind of mounts up to the dead is reinforcing the amount of loss, isn't it? He's gone. There's nothing there anymore. And how that contrasts with our kind and tender hands. So, you know, there's been that loss of the loving relationship. It's gone now that he's dead. And that is what she's going to grieve. So, they she did love him. She's

not some monster who didn't really love her husband. She did love him. Why make her love him? Why did the writer do that? Because again, the writer's trying to explore the reality, the complexity of the situation. Because even though she loves him, she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. She've got that metaphor of like the long procession of years. It's like she can see her life playing out before her. And she can see how it belonged to her absolutely. So, she wants that control over her own life essentially. And it says she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome. So, that metaphor of her spreading her arms out to uh welcome the years,

welcome the life, welcome the future that she's got coming. Look at that freedom in it, right? Opening up, spreading her arms. The very action itself has that connotations of uh freedom to it. And also how it juxtaposes those folded hands and death, the fixed and gray and dead of her husband. Her husband, while loving, is still being presented in a very tight, constrained manner. She, on the other hand, she's flinging her arms open at the future that she's got coming. And the reason she's flinging her arms over, again, that hammer is coming in nice and explicit. There would be no one to live for during those coming years. She would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending her. Like,

there's there's no mystery here about why she's saying that she's so happy about this freedom. Because of her being able to have control over her own [clears throat] life. Remember that context context? Remember the civil death the women go through when she when they're married? That's gone now. Legally speaking at this time period, she can have property again. She can control her money again. She can earn it and spend it however she pleases again. And then when we see that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature. That is all talking about marriage, isn't it? Men and women though, notice that, both genders. Marriage doesn't

work for either of them. They're imposing a private will upon them. There's that sense of oppression they're coming in in that verb of imposing. We've also interestingly got that metaphor of the blind persistence. Blind persistence. Why is it a blind persistence to go into marriage? Blind, obviously, you can't see, so what is that a metaphor of? Is it for society not thinking through, not recognizing the impact of marriage? We just go into it because it's what people do and we don't truly recognize. Again, if you think about the origins of the slang woke, okay? Think about what that slang really means. It's the past tense of being awake, your eyes have been opened. That has come from the metaphor of being

blind to something meaning you are oblivious to it, You're ignoring it. You're not seeing it. So, that blind persistence is a metaphor for how society is not recognizing the problems with marriage. It's not recognizing the problem of imposing your will upon someone else by a marriage. And look at that last next sentence. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime. So, it contrast that intention to marry, right? Whether you got kind intention, whether you're marrying for love, or a cruel intention, woman, you are mine. I want your house. Marry me, kind of, you know, forced marriage situation. Regardless of why you go into marriage, she calls it a crime. Why is it a crime? We've got to think of

why compare it to a crime in that metaphor of it being Well, maybe not even a metaphor. It's an analogy, isn't it? She's saying it's a crime. She's saying it's like a crime when she's looking at it there. Crime indicates one person harming another. That's what a crime is, right? Or you're in some way harming, whether that be a physical crime, you're stealing from them, whatever. You are harming somebody else. You're doing something to them without their kind of true permission. So, in that sense, by comparing marriage to a crime, she's essentially pointing out again the harm that it causes, the harm that it puts on, in particular, women. What's interesting then in that next paragraph is she talks about the fact that she had

loved him. But then we get that What did it matter? And this is an interesting one because Mrs. Mallard clearly places freedom above love. What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in this in the face of this possession of self-assertion? Look at the difference, the juxtaposition in that imagery. The unsolved mystery of love, the uncertainty of that, versus the certainty of self-assertion, the certainty of knowing who you are, of having a confidence in who you are, and having an independence to be who you want to be. The uncertainty of love and marriage versus the certainty of independence and freedom. And so she's saying it's that certainty of the latter that makes it so much better than the former. With love, you

never know really what you're going. Notice that as well with how she says she had loved him sometimes, often she had not. It's pointing out that kind of flawed aspect of marriage and of love. How it can come and it can go, and it can, you know, be great sometimes and not others. Freedom on the other hand, independence on the other hand, that is always absolutely amazing. And then she calls that self-assertion, that independence that she's now feeling, the strongest impulse of her being. So that superlative, strongest, obviously the power it's got. We knew it had power. It was The power was alluded to ages ago with the whole, you know, the tricolon of the scents and the sounds and the color.

But now she is explicitly aware of it herself. She's recognized it herself now. She's recognized its power. And also its power is also in that it is an impulse. Impulse. It's natural. It's instinctive. You don't have to think about it. That freedom is powerful and natural. So of course she's got it. And again we have more dialogue. Free, body and soul free. So again we've got the repetition of the free, we've got the exclamatory sentences. But notice this time how she breaks it down, body and soul free. So it's not just that sense of being, you know, legally free and and not having to be married anymore to, you know, have give her body to her husband in the sense of, you know, an intimate relationship,

but her soul free, the spiritual side of her, the spiritual freedom that comes from independence. Notice she's still whispering it, though. There's still that hesitancy there, isn't it? She's recognized it as the strongest impulse. She's absolutely like look at all these exclamatory sentences. She feels so much more confident and certain in what she's feeling. She's still whispering it though. There's still this little bit of her that's afraid to really sink into it. Is that that patriarchal society again? Is that our patriarchal society stopping her from truly leaning in to the real happiness and joy that she's feeling? So, this last section of the story, we've got her sister Josephine begging

for her to be let in and she says, "Louise, open the door." Do you know that's the first time she's been called Louise? That's the first time we've had that mode of address, address her by her first name. The significance of that is profound. Up to this point she's been Mrs. Mallard. She's been referred to you by the name that her husband gave her. Now she's referred to you by her name. Pretty fitting, right? Considering she's now independent and she's now free. And she's told that she's going to uh make herself ill. For heaven's sake, open the door. So that you make yourself ill, that's again that classic old way of thinking about women not being able to handle their emotions. Actually, we get the opposite. So, first

of all, the way that um Louise speaks, that imperative, "Go away." The certainty in her sentence, "I am not making myself ill." She is in control. She She knows what she's doing. And we're told she was drinking in the very elixir of life through that open window. So, remember the open was the symbol of freedom, of opportunity. She's drinking it in that metaphor. She's taking in all of that and it's referred to as an elixir of life. Now, an elixir is like a magical potion, right? So, having those connotations of something being magical, it's like nothing she's ever experienced before. It almost doesn't feel real because it's so unheard of to her. So, on the one hand, this is pointing out how scarce, how rare freedom is for

women. On the other hand, it's also pointing out its power, isn't it? Cuz it's like it's magic. This is amazing. This feels amazing. It's like magic. She then starts like thinking about her future, and we have this tricolon of spring days and summer days and all sorts of days that would be her own. So, that tricolon creates that sense of the mounting time and the mounting freedom that she's got. And that also combines with the symbolism behind spring and summer. Spring, classic, you know, new beginnings, new opportunities. Summer, classic, peak happiness, peak joy. She then says that she breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. So,

we've got that juxtaposition there between how she used to feel about life and how she feels about it now. So, the quick prayer, her hope that she wants her future to go on, she wants that time versus the connotations behind shudder and and the kind of dislike of wanting life to be long. She hated life when she was going to be oppressed and she was going to be repressed. I feel really sad talking about these lines cuz she's so freaking happy and I'm just so happy for her, but I also know what's coming, so I'm also completely gutted for her. So, she's got she she leaves the room. She has got this feverish triumph in her eyes and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of victory. So, you've got that

adverb of unwittingly again suggesting that that natural, right? This is the natural way that women will be when they are free. They will naturally be like a goddess of victory with that meaning of being powerful, being in control, being successful. And she has that naturally because she has freedom and because she has independence. [sighs] And now it's all going to go uh very quickly in how many sentences is that? Four sentences? Five sentences. Because our writer's focus is going to shift to Brently Mallard, her husband. It's going to shift away from her. It's going to shift to him. And we get no mention of her. We don't get a description of her death. We don't get a description of her reaction seeing her

husband. We just got Richard's focus of protecting him. Protect Mr. Mallard from seeing the wife. Don't protect the wife who's dying. Protect Mr. Mallard from having to go through that. And again, notice that mode of address, his wife. Louise is gone. She's his wife. Her identity has been lost in that of her husband's in the role that she plays in relation to her husband. Our so goddess, our goddess of victory in a matter of sentences has become his wife. And then we end on that final sentence. When the doctors came, they said she had died of heart disease. Now, our doctors represent like, you know, authority. Their views are trusted in society. Still true today. We trust what the doctors say, very rightly so.

And they say she had died of heart disease. That's what killed her. But that bit added on in the end there after the dash. First of all, we don't know. It's not quite clear. Did the doctor say that or is the narrator saying that of the joy that kills? But also, what does that mean of the joy that kills? What's the joy that kills? In what way could that happiness from freedom kill? Does it kill her because it gets taken away? Is that why it killed? And so it becomes this question of what really killed Mrs. Mallard? Was it heart disease or because the heart disease was a symbol of emotional conflict and she lost that emotional conflict when she gained her freedom? Was it the pain of regaining it when she

realized she wasn't going to have her freedom because her husband was alive? Was that what killed her? So in that sense, what killed her wasn't heart disease. It was society. Society's repression of her. Society's insistence on taking away her freedom. And then so we have to ask ourselves, what kind of tone is this story ending on? It's certainly not a happy tone. So, there's no question of that. And we've got to ask ourselves, what tone does it end on? There's certainly just a feeling of I don't even know how to describe it to be honest with you. I'm I'm struggling to describe the emotions I'm feeling after all this. What are you feeling? There's just a sense of loss, isn't there? Of sadness.

For Mrs. Mallard. We feel that for Mrs. Mallard. And notice how that feeling of sadness for Mrs. Mallard is different from what it was in the beginning. In the beginning it was pity. Our poor woman can't handle her emotions. Now our reader has been on that journey and it's like, oh man. Mrs. Mallard. What did society do to you, man? What did society do? And so our writer has achieved her goal. She set up society's expectations of women. She made us blame the woman in her weakness. And then she made us realize the problem is not the woman. The woman can be powerful. The woman can be confident. The woman can be in control and know what she wants if you just let her be free and if you just let her be

independent. And so what our writer has beautifully done is criticize the sexist society, criticize how women are treated, and criticize the oppressiveness of marriage.