When I first began to read “The story of an Hour,” Mrs. Mallard seemed to me an old woman and as we are told in the very first line, “afflicted with a heart trouble.” I was surprised later, when it said that she was young. I think that Chopin is showing us a social situation of the times with the woman as a prisoner of her husband. Marriage was not always about mutual love between …showed first 75 words of 712 total…

…showed last 75 words of 712 total…was Brently. Louise descends the staircase and everything is taken away from her. She is dead. Mrs. Mallard’s heart stopped. Her life stopped. Doctors said she had died of heart disease of joy that kills To me the word joy would be the joy that she felt when she realized that her husband was dead and that she was free, and the pain that killed her, when she saw him walking through the door.