Reflection: The Story of an Hour

The Story of an Hour is a really weird story. Mrs. Mallard was notified that her husband was killed in a train accident. She began to sob, but later in the story we find out that she was really happy because her husband was really oppressing. She secluded herself from all of the other women whose husbands in the train accident. I think the reason that she did this was because she did not want the other women to know that she was actually happy that her husband was dead and so she was not going to have to live with the oppression. She was free! At the end of the story her husband actually walks into the room. The story says that she died of great joy because she found out that her husband was actually still alive. I think that when he walked into the room, she felt oppressed again just by his presence, so she died of a heart attack. He seems to have been not a very good husband because she admitted that she did not love him all of the time. She then goes on to say that most of the time she actually did not love him. He was putting way too much pressure on her and she was getting tired of handling the situation. She became overjoyed when she found out he was dead because she was not going to have to live with that kind of pressure on her anymore.

This is a good example of the characteristics of Realism because they were telling how the situation really was. They did not try to sugar coat anything because in the Realism time period, the story was told as it really was in real life (Diamond). Realism also shows the imperfection of life (Diamond). The flaw in the marriage of the Mallards was definitely classified as an imperfection of life. It is very unfortunate that marriages have to be that way. Many marriages are like that today, but for different reasons. In the time of the Realism period the marriages went wrong because the man thought he was superior to the women.

Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour" Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 554-555. Print.

Diamond, Marie Josephine, ed. "realism." Encyclopedia of World Writers, 1800 to the Present. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2011. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= GEWW480&SingleRecord=True (accessed February 21, 2012).