
	Trending ▼ ICSE CBSE 10th ISC CBSE 12th CTET GATE UGC NET Vestibulares ResFinder

ISC Class XII Notes 2022 : English Paper 2 (English Literature) (Smt. Sulochanadevi Singhania School, Thane) : The Story Of An Hour

3 pages, 4 questions, 0 questions with responses, 0 total responses,

Maddy .I
Smt. Sulochanadevi Singhania School, Thane
1st to 10th, X-XII

+Fave Message

Profile Timeline Uploads

Home > madhushri_mri > F Also featured on: School Page

Formatting page ...

The Story of an Hour 1. Introduction: "The Story of an Hour" by American author Kate Chopin is a mainstay of feminist literary study. Originally published in 1894, the story documents the complicated reaction of Louise Mallard upon learning of her husband's death. Chopin tackles complex issues involved in the interplay of female independence, love, and marriage through her brief but effective characterization of the supposedly widowed Louise Mallard in her last hour of life. After discovering that her husband has died in a train accident, Mrs. Mallard faces conflicting emotions of grief at her husband's death and exultation at the prospects for freedom in the remainder of her life. The latter emotion eventually takes precedence in her thoughts. As with many successful short stories, however, the story does not end peacefully at this point but instead creates a climactic twist. 2. Summary and Analysis The News and the First Reaction: Louise Mallard has a weak heart. Her sister Josephine, who is worried that bad news will overwhelm Louise and worsen her condition, tells her as calmly as possible that her husband, Brently Mallard, has been killed in a train accident. Brently s friend Richards, who learned about the accident while spending time at the newspaper office, asked Josephine to deliver the news of the tragedy to Louise, and now he stands by as Louise hears that her husband has died. Unlike other women of her time period, who become paralyzed by denial when confronted by bad news, Louise weeps into Josephine s arms with wild abandon. Analysis: Women were expected to be passive and delicate in the 19th century, and Louise s heart condition reinforces this societal expectation. Her physical weakness further encourages the people around her like Richards and Josephine to stifle her emotions and overprotect her. The Open Window; A Growing Awareness of Freedom : After her initial sobs of grief subside, Louise escapes into her bedroom and locks the door. She refuses to let Josephine or Richards follow her. Alone, she falls into a chair placed before an open window. Absolutely drained by her own anguish and haunted by exhaustion, she rests in the chair and looks out the window. The scene is full of energy and hope. The trees are "all aquiver with the new spring of life," the "delicious breath of rain" is in the air, sparrows are twittering, and Louise can hear someone singing a song in the distance. She can see "patches of blue sky" amid the clouds. She observes these patches of blue sky without registering what they might mean. Describing Louise's gaze, Chopin writes, "It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought." Analysis: Louise s desire to be alone with her grief is the first indication of her inclination toward freedom and independence, especially in regards to the handling of her own emotions. At first, she doesn't consciously allow herself to think about this freedom. The knowledge reaches her wordlessly and symbolically, via the "open window" through which she sees the "open square" in front of her house. The repetition of the word "open" emphasizes possibility and a lack of restrictions. The nature offers her hints that she slowly pieces together without even realizing she is doing so. Her blank stare tells that she had not been thinking intelligently, otherwise the social norms might have prevented her from such an epiphany. Self-discovery; A Force Too Powerful to Oppose She senses a feeling approaching her. She is unable to articulate the nature of the sensation, which makes her fear it all the more. It seems ever-present, reaching out from the sky and coming to her through the sights and smells that drift around her. As she begins to realize what it is, she strives "to beat it back with her will." Yet its force is too powerful to oppose. Once she allows herself to recognize her approaching freedom, she utters the word "free" over and over again, relishing it. Her fear and her uncomprehending stare are replaced by acceptance and excitement. Louise s heart pulses faster and her blood rushes through her body, but this only relaxes her and turns her fearful state into one of enlivened vigor. Analysis: In this moment, Louise once again experiences the kind of physical and emotional excitement that she is supposed to avoid because of her heart condition. Yet again, she disregards the limitations placed upon her by her own body and by society, finally giving herself over to the growing sense of freedom represented by the emergence of spring outside the window. Freedom: Despite the fact that she and her husband enjoyed a stable, loving marriage, she is flooded with ecstasy by the prospect of no longer being required to live dependent upon her husband, upon anyone. Now the remainder of her life belongs only to her, and she is overjoyed at the idea of this freedom. She pays no attention to whether or not the joy she feels about Brently s death is terrible or unkind. She thinks of Brently's "kind, tender hands" and "the face that had never looked save with love upon her," and she recognizes that she has not finished weeping for him. Louise realizes that she will no longer be subjected to the powerful rules and norms of marriage, which cause humans to blindly and stubbornly impose themselves on one another. Although she had sometimes loved Brently (and sometimes had not), she feels relieved to finally be in possession of an intense sense of self-assertion, which she recognizes as the strongest impulse of her being. Deciding that the value of love and marriage counts for very little when compared to her freedom of will, she ecstatically whispers, Free! Body and soul free! Analysis: Her husband s death has made her see something she hasn't seen before and might likely never have seen if he had lived: her desire for self-determination. In the 19th century, women were expected to live under the financial and social control of their husbands. In this moment, Louise recognizes the rare opportunity she now has to escape this patriarchal dynamic. Josephine s Intrusion: Worried that Louise will make herself sick by staying alone in her bedroom, Josephine kneels outside the room and begs her sister through the keyhole to open the door. Louise tells Josephine to go away and that she s not making herself ill. She says a short prayer that her life will be long, and knows that it was just the day before when she wished it would be short. Eventually Louise rises from her chair and opens the door, just as Josephine begs her to. Louise s eyes are alight with triumph, and without realizing it she carries herself like a kind of goddess. She embraces her sister. Analysis: Louise s posture and gaze symbolize confidence and power despite her sister s overprotective intrusion and the expectation that she remain passive and weak. The Irony of Joy That Kills: Without warning, Brently Mallard appears in the doorframe, utterly unaware of any train accident; he had been far from the scene of the tragedy. Calmly standing at the bottom of the stairs, he is shocked by Josephine s deafening scream and by Richards s futile attempt to shield him from his wife s view. When doctors later examine Louise s body, they pronounce that she died because of her weak heart, of joy that kills. Analysis: When the doctors determine that Louise "died of heart disease -- of joy that kills," the reader immediately recognizes the irony. It seems clear that her shock was not joy over her husband's survival, but rather distress over losing her cherished, newfound freedom. Louise did briefly experience joy -- the joy of imagining herself in control of her own life. And it was the removal of that intense joy that led to her death. 3. Theme Women in 19th-Century Society: In the late 19th century, much of American society held to the deep-seated belief that women were inferior to and should remain dependent upon husbands and other male figures. Most women had little or no financial or other independence. The only way that was truly available to women at the time to be independent was: through the death of a wealthy husband, leaving the woman with her own fortune and no need to remarry to maintain her station in life. And so, despite her real grief at her husband s unexpected death, Louise feels intense joy at the exceedingly rare prospect being granted to her as a woman: the chance to be free, free. Freedom and Independence: In The Story of an Hour, freedom and independence not love, not friends, not family, not honor or glory or anything else are held up as what make a life worth living. In the The Story of an Hour, independence is a forbidden pleasure that can be imagined only privately. Louise s dream of freedom comes when she is alone in her room, and coincidently along with Louise herself, dies almost as soon as she leaves the solitary ecstasy of her room. The Inherent Oppressiveness of Marriage: In Louise s conception, it is both women and men who lack freedom; it is both women and men who, in all their interactions with each other, steal freedom from each other. She never names a specific way in which Brently oppressed her, hinting instead that marriage in general stifles both women and men. 4. Character Louise Mallard: Mrs. Mallard is emblematic of the typical oppressed women of 19th century. The narrator describes her, she was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines spoke of repression and even a certain strength . Frail Woman Her violent to the news of her husband s death shows that she is an emotional, demonstrative woman. Dominated in a repressed marriage. Ahead of her times; Mrs. Mallard could not wait to be free from the shackles of society that insisted upon them the identity tag of a wife. She is genuinely sad for her husband s death but desire for independence trumps every other emotion, Self-asserting and strong. Symbol of modern feminism.

Formatting page ...

madhushri_mri chat

Horizontal lines at:
Guest Horizontal lines at:
AutoRM Data:
Box geometries: