The Story of an Hour

by Kate Chopin · 1894

1,017 words4 min readbeginnerLiterary Fiction

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.

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, 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 itself 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. 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.

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 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.

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, 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 a very elixir of life 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.

Someone 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 the 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 Richards was too late.

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

Reading guide by Jack Shi · Contains spoilers

What is The Story of an Hour about?

The Story of an Hour follows Louise Mallard, who has heart trouble, in the hour after she is told her husband Brently has died in a railroad disaster. Alone in her room she weeps, then recognizes a rush of freedom and whispers “free, free, free!” as she imagines years that “would belong to her absolutely.” When Brently walks in alive, she dies, and the doctors say it was “of the joy that kills.” The story asks what the doctors, and the reader, take that last phrase to mean.

One-page summary

Who: Mrs. Mallard, who is “afflicted with a heart trouble”; her sister Josephine; her husband’s friend Richards; and her husband, Brently Mallard. The text gives her first name, Louise, only through Josephine’s pleading at the door.
The news: Richards saw Brently’s name “leading the list” of those killed in the newspaper office after a railroad disaster and confirmed it by a second telegram before hurrying to tell her.
Her first reaction: She “wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms,” then goes to her room alone and lets no one follow.
The room: She sinks into an armchair facing an open window: treetops “aquiver with the new spring life,” a peddler crying his wares, a distant song, sparrows, and patches of blue sky.
The turn: Something “creeping out of the sky” comes to possess her. She tries to “beat it back with her will,” then whispers “free, free, free!”
What she imagines: Years that “would belong to her absolutely,” with “no one to live for her” and no “powerful will bending hers.” She admits she “loved him — sometimes. Often she had not.”
How it ends: She opens the door and goes downstairs with Josephine. Brently enters with a latchkey, “far from the scene of the accident.” Richards is “too late” to screen him, and she dies.
Themes: Freedom, marriage, identity, irony, and the gap between what others see and what a person feels.
Length: About 1,017 words in this edition, roughly a four-minute read.

Characters

Louise Mallard

The protagonist, introduced as “Mrs. Mallard.” She is “young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength.” Her grief is real and immediate, and so is the feeling that follows it; the story lets both stand. The narrator reports her inner state directly, which is why the reader knows what the other characters do not.

Brently Mallard

The husband. He is described through her memory as the one whose face “had never looked save with love upon her,” and the text adds that she “had loved him — sometimes. Often she had not.” He never speaks. He arrives “composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella,” unaware that anything has happened.

Josephine

Louise’s sister, who tells her the news “in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing.” She kneels at the locked door “imploring for admission,” fearing her sister will make herself ill. Her concern is sincere and also misreads what is happening inside the room.

Richards

Brently’s friend, who brings the news and checks it with a second telegram “to forestall any less careful, less tender friend.” He waits at the bottom of the stairs and tries to shield Brently from her view, but he is “too late.”

The doctors

They appear only in the last sentence. Their diagnosis, “heart disease — of the joy that kills,” is the story’s final piece of irony, because the reader has just watched a different feeling.

Setting and timeline

Almost everything happens in one room, with a view through an open window. The street and the sky are the only parts of the outside world she receives: a peddler’s cry, a faint song, sparrows, and “delicious breath of rain” The spring setting supports the sense of beginning, set against the news of a death.

The title is literal. The story covers the time between her hearing that her husband is dead and learning that he is alive. The text never gives a clock time; the hour is the span between the two pieces of news.

The newsJosephine tells her, with Richards beside her; Richards had read Brently’s name “leading the list” of the killed.
The first griefShe weeps “with sudden, wild abandonment,” then goes to her room alone.
The armchairShe sinks into a chair facing the open window and looks at the sky in “a suspension of intelligent thought.”
The approachSomething “subtle and elusive” comes toward her “through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.”
The recognitionShe whispers “free, free, free!” and her stare and “look of terror” leave her eyes.
Josephine at the doorJosephine pleads through the keyhole; Louise answers “Go away. I am not making myself ill.”
She comes outShe opens the door “like a goddess of Victory” and descends the stairs with Josephine.
The returnBrently opens the front door with a latchkey. Josephine cries out; Richards moves too late.
The last lineThe doctors say she died “of heart disease — of the joy that kills.”

Symbols and their meanings

The open window

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair.

The window is how the outside world, spring and the sky, reaches a woman who has gone into a closed room. Read symbolically, it is the opening to a future of her own. The text later says she was “drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window,” and the story keeps the window open while the door stays locked.

Spring

the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life

New growth is the first thing she sees, before she names any feeling. The season sits against the news of a death and gives the turn a sensory source. It signals a beginning without the narrator stating one.

The sky

creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air

The thing that approaches her has no name at first and comes from outside her. It reaches her through the senses before she can put it into words, which is why the story describes her body (the rise and fall of her bosom, her pulse) before it quotes her.

The locked door

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole

The door divides what Louise feels from what the family assumes. Josephine reads grief and danger; Louise is “drinking in” life. The door opening is the moment the private recognition meets the public story.

The heart

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble

The first sentence makes the heart a medical fact and the last sentence uses it as the doctors’ explanation. In between, the text treats feeling, from her pulse to “love, the unsolved mystery,” as something the body registers before it is named.

What the narrator claims, and what the text shows

She is a woman who is crushed by the news.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance.

The narrator rules out the expected response in the third paragraph. She weeps at once, and then the story moves to what comes after the weeping, so the expected reading is set aside early.

Joy is what kills her.

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

This is what the doctors said, not what the narrator says. The narrator has just shown an earlier joy, her “monstrous joy” of freedom, and the doctors’ statement fits only the version of events they can see.

Her marriage was one of love.

And yet she had loved him — sometimes. Often she had not.

The same paragraph that mentions the “kind, tender hands” and the face that “had never looked save with love upon her” also says she often did not love him. The text keeps both, and offers no verdict on the marriage.

Her freedom is a crime against grief.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her.

She does not argue about whether she should feel it. The narrator reports that “A clear and exalted perception” let her “dismiss the suggestion as trivial,” which is a statement about her state of mind, not a moral ruling by the story.

Ending explained

The last sentence is delivered by the doctors, not by the narrator. They say she “had died of heart disease — of the joy that kills.” Read at face value, it means joy at seeing her husband alive. The reader has seen a different joy, the “monstrous joy” of her freedom, so the same words point two ways. This is verbal and situational irony in a single line.

The text does not state why she dies. One common reading says the shock of seeing Brently end the future she had just imagined is what her heart cannot bear. Another reads her death as the news breaking a heart that was already weak. The story supports the first by the sequence and the second by its first sentence; it does not choose.

Brently’s return is ordinary: he is “a little travel-stained,” carrying a “grip-sack and umbrella.” He “did not even know there had been one.” Nobody in the story acts wrongly in this scene, which is part of why the ending reads as irony rather than blame.

Word counts in this text

Counts from the 1,017-word text on this page, so you can check any of them against the story above. They describe this edition; other printings may differ slightly.

“free”: 5 — “free, free, free!” (three times) and “Free! Body and soul free!” (twice); the word appears only in the room.
“window”: 3 — The open window frames her armchair, her gaze, and the “elixir of life.”
“joy”: 2 — Once as her “monstrous joy,” once in the doctors’ “joy that kills.”
“heart”: 2 — The first line’s “heart trouble” and the last line’s “heart disease” frame the story.
“door”: 6 — The locked door, then the front door, carry the shift between private and public.
“Louise”: 2 — Her first name appears only in Josephine’s pleading at the door.

Vocabulary from the text

afflicted — suffering from In the text: “Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble”
forestall — to act before someone else can In the text: “hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend”
aquiver — trembling or quivering In the text: “all aquiver with the new spring life”
repression — holding back feeling or desire In the text: “whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength”
elixir — a magical or life-giving liquid In the text: “drinking in a very elixir of life”
importunities — persistent requests or pleas In the text: “opened the door to her sister’s importunities”
tumultuously — in a noisy, stormy, or agitated way In the text: “her bosom rose and fell tumultuously”
travel-stained — dirty from a journey In the text: “a little travel-stained”

Classroom activities

Track the two readings. Underline every line where Louise’s feeling can be read as grief and every line where it can be read as freedom. Where do the two readings split, and what does the narrator never say outright?
Rewrite the last line. Write the final sentence from the narrator’s point of view instead of the doctors’. How does the meaning of “the joy that kills” change?
Compare short endings. Read The Story of an Hour and The Necklace. Both end with a reveal. In which story does the reveal change the reader’s understanding of events already seen, and in which does it only change the outcome?

Publication and sources

Kate Chopin wrote the story on April 19, 1894. It was first published in Vogue on December 6, 1894, as “The Dream of an Hour,” on pages 55–56, and reprinted in St. Louis Life on January 5, 1895, as “The Story of an Hour.” Wikipedia: The Story of an Hour.

Wikipedia notes that the story was controversial by American standards of the 1890s because of its female protagonist, who ponders her identity at the news of her husband’s death. The text on this page follows the Wikisource transcription. Wikisource: The Story of an Hour.

Frequently asked questions

What is the main idea of The Story of an Hour?

The story shows a woman who, in the hour after she believes her husband has died, feels a sense of freedom she had not named before. Readers usually discuss it as a story about selfhood inside marriage, though the text itself says she “had loved him — sometimes.”

What does “the joy that kills” mean?

It is what the doctors say killed her: joy at seeing her husband alive. The reader has seen a different joy, so the phrase is ironic. The story does not state her actual cause of death.

Why does Louise Mallard die at the end?

The text does not say. The doctors say she died of heart disease. A common reading is that the shock of her husband’s return ends the future she had just imagined; another is that her weak heart gives out under shock. Both fit the text.

Is Louise happy that her husband died?

The text does not put it that way. She weeps at once, expects to weep again when she sees his body, and says she loved him “sometimes.” The feeling she names is freedom, not pleasure at his death.

What does the open window symbolize?

It is a window onto spring and the sky, and she looks at it as her future opens. The story says she was “drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.”

Who is the narrator of The Story of an Hour?

The story is told in the third person by a narrator who reports Louise’s thoughts and also describes the scene from outside, as with the doctors’ diagnosis. The narrator does not comment on whether her feelings are right.

When was The Story of an Hour published?

Kate Chopin wrote it on April 19, 1894, and it appeared in Vogue on December 6, 1894, as “The Dream of an Hour.” It was reprinted in St. Louis Life in January 1895 under its current title.

Is The Story of an Hour in the public domain?

Yes. It was published in 1894, and the text on this page follows the Wikisource transcription.

Explore the techniques and writing guides

Irony — How the gap between what is said and what is meant works.
Symbolism — Reading an object beyond its literal role.
The Necklace — Another short story that ends on a reveal.
The Yellow Wallpaper — Another 1890s story about a woman’s confined situation.
How to Analyze a Short Story — A method for the close reading used above.

Analysis

Summary

Mrs. Mallard learns of her husband's death in a railroad accident. After initial grief, alone in her room she discovers an unexpected feeling of freedom and independence. She whispers "free, free, free!" and begins to imagine a self-directed future. When her husband unexpectedly walks through the door alive, she collapses and dies - doctors say of "joy that kills."

Plot Structure

expositionMrs. Mallard has heart trouble; news of her husband's death arrives.

rising ActionShe weeps, then retreats alone to her room where a strange feeling overtakes her.

climaxShe embraces the realization of her freedom, whispering "free, free, free!"

falling ActionShe descends the stairs, transformed, with "a feverish triumph in her eyes."

resolutionHer husband walks in alive; she collapses and dies.

Themes

Freedom & Oppression

Mrs. Mallard's brief taste of freedom reveals how deeply oppressed she felt within her marriage, even in a seemingly loving one.

Female Identity

The story examines how marriage in the 19th century could erase a woman's individual identity and autonomy.

The Irony of Fate

The cruelest irony is that the joy of freedom, not grief, is what ultimately destroys Mrs. Mallard.

Techniques

Situational Irony

The doctors' conclusion that she died of "joy that kills" is the opposite of the truth - she died from the shock of losing her newfound freedom.

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

Symbolism

The open window represents possibility and freedom; the spring scene outside symbolizes new life and rebirth.

"She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life."

Limited Third Person

Access to Mrs. Mallard's inner thoughts reveals what society and family cannot see - her true feelings.

"Free! Body and soul free!"

Discussion Questions

What does the open window symbolize in the context of Mrs. Mallard's emotional journey?
How does Chopin use irony in the final line of the story?
Was Mrs. Mallard's marriage unhappy? What evidence supports your view?
Why is this story considered a landmark of feminist literature?
How does the compressed timeframe of "an hour" intensify the story's impact?