Kate Chopin, "The Story of an Hour" Analysis

“The Story of An Hour” by Kate Chopin is a short story set in the year 1894 about a woman, Mrs. Mallard, who is told about her husband’s unexpected death by her sister. At first, Mrs. Mallard’s reaction is what one would expect of a woman’s whose husband just passed away, and she seems completely inconsolable and anguished. However, it doesn’t take long for her emotional state to change completely and drastically. One quote that I found worth discussing from the text is, “She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will- as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: “free, free, free!” The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body” (1).
There were many aspects of this quote that I found worth analyzing, and I think that the specific language used enhanced the story a great deal.  It’s interesting to me that the story says Mrs. Mallard could tell something was “approaching to possess her,” when in reality nothing was possessing her. I think that Mrs. Mallard was finally beginning to find herself, and that thing that was possessing her was actually her own mind and awareness, for lack of a better way to describe it. She had been so used to being repressed that it actually scared her at first to realize that she was now completely free to be her own person instead of basing her self image on another person- her husband.
This quote places a great emphasis on the real helplessness of Mrs. Mallard, saying that her will was “as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been”. This description of her hands is good imagery, and provided me with a picture of how I imagined her to look overall: pale, thin, and weak. By comparing her will to that image, it was easy to see that Mrs. Mallard was not a woman of power, in society or within her marriage. This most likely had a lot to do with the time period of the story as well, which makes her secondary reaction to her husband’s death both shocking yet completely understandable.
I also found it interesting how Mrs. Mallard is described at the end of this quote. Although she was not possessed per se, the word choice of the author certainly makes it seem as though she could have been. Not only does she undergo a mental transformation when realizing she is “free,” her excitement manifests itself into her physical state as well. The way that she was compared reminded me of a wild animal, and I found it interesting to consider that analogy: in a way, she was like a wild animal who had been freed after being kept in captivity, with all her senses heightened as she realized the world that had just been opened up to her. I really enjoyed this story and I think that this quote in particular gave me as a reader a vivid sense of what Mrs. Mallard was experiencing.