"The Story Of An Hour" - Kate Chopin

You can read the story, in much less than an hour, here.


Chop. In. That is all that comes to mind when I read the author's last name. Showpaan. That's the way her last name should be spelled. If that is how you pronounce it. If her name was Chop-in, it would be understandable, but it is not! I suppose though, I cannot complain, she did right a catchy little story, and even though it still had death in it, it's one of the nicer selections we have done in the unit.

Heart defect. Heart murmur. Heart. Problem. This is what Mrs. Mallard had, and this is what killed her. Ironic? No, not really, she had something wrong with her heart; I don't think we can live without one of those. At least that what the Doctors on television say. And television never lies! ( ... ) However the rest of the story is full of irony; irony is something I can't get enough of. Being the incredibly sarcastic person that I am, irony and satire run the main elements of my humour, so when reading a short story based around some sort of ironic event, it tends to catch my eye a little more, and I pay more attention. Usually I end up enjoying the story a little more, because of that act of irony, or humour from which the story is based.

Mrs. Mallard's husband dies, he was in a train accident. OH NO. What if her weak heart implodes on hearing this?! Wait... she is happy? She was really oppressed all this time and she did not know it? Now, she is free to be her own woman. That's pretty good I guess. But, her husband died. Oh, there is a knock on the door, who could THAT be at such a glorious time. It's her husband...He is not died. He did not even know about the accident. It is a miracle! It is too much for Mrs. Mallard's poor, weak heart, and she dies.

Irony.

Now, you could go into detail and argue about the sense of freedom she had felt when her husband was gone, and how that, instead of losing it again, upon seeing her husband, her heart (which in my argument can think for itself) stopped working so she would die a free woman. This is what happened! But, it was ironic, which is what I am discussing here in this entry. Irony, and how deviously clever it can be. Irony, is something that can be a bad thing sometimes, but most times thinking about it after, you can smile and sometimes laugh and the terrible occurrence of events, and consider it an experience to say the least. Life is full of irony.