Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Irony and Expectations in “The Story of an Hour”

Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” though extremely short, as far as stories go, is figuratively filled to the brim with Irony.  Irony pulses through Mrs. Mallard’s veins by her afflicted heart.  It seeps in through the open window and the view that gives the promise of spring.  Life and death, love and bondage, these themes play off each other in unexpected ways.  Chopin seems to foreshadow one outcome and then plays out another; she sets up very clear expectations and then doesn’t quite follow through. The eventual outcome does not meet the expectations of the readers, because irony is deeply embedded in this fine story.
            The first line of the story sets up the irony nicely: “Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart condition, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death” (157).  This sort of beginning is straight forward and readers are led to expect the outcome of really only one possible scenario: Louise Mallard will take the news badly and her heart will fail her.  But Kate Chopin masterfully uses irony, and the expected outcome is not how the story ends.  If it were the story would be pointless, as would this essay.
            At first, Mrs. Mallard takes the news exactly as we, the readers, would expect her to.  She weeps “at once, with sudden, wild abandonment,” as any woman would who had just received such terrible news.  She glances out the window and sees “tops of trees . . . all aquiver with the new spring life”.  In a story about death, it is interesting that the setting would be springtime.  She, Mrs. Mallard, believes and we as readers are led to believe that Mr. Mallard is dead.  The spring image of “countless sparrows . . . twittering in the eaves” does not quite seem to give the right mood of life ended, of death.  Spring implies new life and rebirth.  In this case, it symbolizes Mrs. Mallard’s new life without her husband. (157)
            Instead of dying, like one would expect, or dwelling in sadness, Louise starts to think a little differently on her new life alone: “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully”.  And we get another reference to her heart: “Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously”.  This is the moment where the story takes a dramatic and ironic turn, this is the moment where Louise Mallard comes to her realization that without her husband she can be “free, free, free!” (157).
            As this turn takes place, we get yet one more mention of Mrs. Mallard’s heart as its’ “pulse [beats] fast, and the coursing blood [warms] and [relaxes] every inch of her body” (157).  Now instead of being her weakness, ironically her heart is what relaxes her, courses blood through her and ultimately keeps her alive.  Instead of killing her this weakness makes her strong enough to hold onto her new vision.  She abandons her sadness, at least in this moment, for she knows that she will “weep again when she [sees] the kind, tender hands folded in death,” but she does not “stop to ask if it were not a monstrous joy that held her”.  But she also realizes that she can become free from that “powerful will bending her” to her husband’s will.  Only through death does she realize that she can truly live. (158)
This is not the way a widow is expected to think minutes after hearing the news that her husband has died.  Louise sees her marriage as bondage, and ironically thinks that it “was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life may be long” (158).  Little does she know that the dream of today, freedom from the “bondage” of her marriage, will only come to pass by way of yesterday’s desire, that her life will be short. 
            Mrs. Mallard conceives that “a long procession of years” awaits her that will “belong to her absolutely” (158).  The word procession here is ironic in and of itself.  Procession means “continuous forward movement” which definitely makes sense in this context, but I’d like to suggest another reason why Chopin may have chosen this word instead of progression or succession or any other of its synonyms (“procession”).   Procession isn’t used extremely often in common vernacular, and when it is the word “funeral” usually precedes it.  Ironically, this type of procession is in her future; It will not be her husband’s funeral, but it will “belong to her absolutely” (158).
            When Josephine, Louis Mallard’s sister, tells her that she will make herself ill, Louise replies, emphatically, “Go away. I am not making myself ill”.  We are told that she is in fact “drinking in the very elixir of life through that open window”.  The scene outside of spring represents something that she can never obtain, but it is not the elixir of life, for in five very short paragraphs, Louise Mallard’s life will be over.  At that moment, however, “there was a feverish triumph in her eyes” as she concocted her story that only lasted an hour. (158)
No, she was not making herself ill, and that is what is ironic.  Maybe if she had been making herself ill she would have been prepared to see her husband alive again.  But she was making herself well, she was freeing herself: “Free! Body and soul free!” (158).  Unfortunately, her body and soul wanted freedom so badly that they couldn’t take it when they say Mr. Mallard alive and well and unaware that he had ever even been presumed dead.
The most ironic thing in the entire story is the very last sentence.  It reflects the opening sentence about Louise Mallard’s heart affliction.  After she has seen her husband and is dead, the story closes like this: “When the doctors came the said she had dies of heart disease—of joy that kills” (158).  The eventual outcome, Mrs. Mallard’s death almost meets the expectations of the readers, but not in the expected way.  Irony weaves its way through the story and emanates from the spring day outside.  Mrs. Mallard’s heart did fail her in the end.  She did not get the new life she expected and the disappointment killed her.  She didn’t die from joy but from melancholy, ironically enough.

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