The Story of an Hour

As a matter of fact the short story under consideration which is entitled “The Story of an Hour” deals with the feelings of a supposed widow who suffers from heart trouble and gets to know from her sister Josephine that her husband perished in a railroad accident.

The story is set in the times of female liberation and women striving for gaining more rights. To a certain extent, the story claims that women may rejoice the deaths of their husbands even though they consider that they virtually love them. The reaction of the widow is really unexpected, though the lady cries first, she calms down and sits in her room enjoying the view from the window: “The delicious breath of rain was in the air”¦The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves”. The writer applies to a misplaced modifier describing the song heard by the lady. She knows that she will have “no one to live for” but herself and imagines her further life filled with happiness and freedom. Despite the scene is quite static the lady copes with powerlessness and whispers: “Free, free, free!”

She lives in the sense of ambition and joy only for one hour and the very reason of her inspiration and calmness lies in the fact that she desperately needs freedom as all the women who used to live in terms of inequality a century ago. The writer also ironically describes the lady’s warm feelings towards her husband with the help of another dangling modifier by pointing out that she will remember his “kind, tender hands folded with death”. She will also see her husband’s face that “had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead”.

So, the open window in her room is a symbol of becoming independent and beginning a new life with new opportunities and without former restrictions. But her heart fails when she sees her husband alive again and realizes that her hopes are broken against the shores of reality.