Freedom Gained and Lost
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Freedom Gained and Lost
Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour," tells the story of Louise Mallard's reaction to the news of her husband's tragic death in a railroad accident. Within one hour's time Louise finds herself quickly moving from grief through a sense of newfound freedom and finally into despair of the loss of that freedom.
When I first started reading this story, the very first line "Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble" led me to believe Mrs. Mallard to be an old woman (Chopin 12). However, later in the story, Chopin writes "She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength" (13). This description leads me to believe that Louise was a young woman who felt trapped, much as a prisoner in the marriage.
When she first heard of her husband's death, it is said that she "wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment" (13). I, as many women, have often felt this way in a marriage. Louise, however, did not have the opportunity to take that giant step to freedom; freedom for me was a divorce...