Kate Chopin

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The Story of An Hour

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The Author: Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin (1851-1904) was born Katherine O' Flaherty on February 8, 1850 of an Irish and French descent in St. Louis, Missouri. Kate was blessed by having many female mentors throughout her childhood: either the strong and independent widows in her family or the intellectual nuns of her school. Her father, an Irish immigrant, was very successful in many business ventures, but died in a train accident in November 1855. Her mother, a descendant from an old Creole family, married when she was barely 16 years old, and heard of her 50-year-old husbands' death when she was only 27 years old. She might have been depressed, yet liberated by the news, or so as Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour" suggests. When Kate was only five and a half she was sent to the Academy of the Sacred Heart. After only two months there, she came home and was to be educated by her great-grandmother.

Two years after her fathers' death, Kate returned to the Academy of the Sacred Heart. In May of 1861 the Civil War broke out in St. Louis, and Kitty's family was banished for their Confederate "sympathies." Kate suffered the loss of her brother and grandmother first, and later all of her brothers and sisters, so that by the time Kate was 24 years old, she was an only child of the family. When she graduated from the Academy of the Sacred Heart, she was known as a brilliant storyteller, an honors student, a youthful cynic, and an accomplished pianist. After the war, Kate almost had a depressed manner and she finished her first writing Commonplace Book, which became a diary of her intellectual and social life.

At the age of 19, Kate met Louisiana native Oscar Chopin, married him on June 9, 1870, and established their new home in New Orleans. In 1879, they moved north to his family's plantations in Natchitoches Parish, and it was then that Kate became acquainted with the Creole Community that became an important focus of her writing. In 1882 Oscar contracted and died from swamp fever in 1883, leaving Kate to return to St. Louis with their six young children. A year later, her mother also died and she started writing as a way of expressing her anger and disappointment with life.

Chopin wrote for many years, had been a nationally acclaimed writer for more than a decade, and her popularity was extreme until her poor health, her concerns about her family and critical disapproval of her novel, The Awakening, slowed her down. Anyway Chopin was very active in literary societies. On August 20, 1904, Chopin suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage and died two days later.

Most of her fictions concern the lives of the Creole people, the descendants of the French who had settled in Louisiana. Her major works include her first and second collections of short stories Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897), novels Fault (1890) and The Awakening (1899)，the latter has been considered her masterpiece by many critics. She also did some translation and poetry writing. With the publication of The Complete works of Kate Chopin in 1969, her position in American literature has been secured as an important writer.

The Story of an Hour describes the psychology and reaction of a wife to the news that her husband dies in a train accident.

The Story of An Hour

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.¹

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences, veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received,² with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of “killed.” He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself³ she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life.⁴ The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.⁵

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. 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 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 pulse beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.

She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death, the face that had never looked save with love upon her,⁶ fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him––sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being.

“Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for admission. “Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door––you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door.”

“Go away. I am not making myself ill.” No; she was drinking in the very elixir of life⁷ through that open window.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister’s waist and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

But Richard was too late.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease––of joy that kills.

Notes

1. to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death: 小心翼翼地向她透露丈夫死亡的消息。 “to break the (bad) news (to somebody) ” 意为用一点技巧（向某人）透露（坏）消息以减轻听者所受的打击。

2. when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received: 收到铁路失事的报道时。“intelligence” 意为消息、情报。

3. when the storm of grief had spent itself: 当悲哀稍有缓解。

4. the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life: 枝头震颤着，流溢出缕缕春意。

5. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought:（她凝视着蓝天）那不是凝思，而是睿思的停顿。

6. that had never looked save with love upon her: 那张从前充满幸福、爱意的脸。

7. the very elixir of life: 长生不老药。

Questions for Discussion:

1. What happens to Mr. Mallard in the beginning according to the story?

2. Why did Mrs. Mallard shut herself in her own room?

3. “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully.”(Sent.1, Par.9) What is “something” indicated here in your opinion?

4. Is there any change in her attitude to her husband’s death? If so, what is it?

5. How do you understand the exclamation “Free! Body and soul free!”?