The Story of an Hour (Edexcel IGCSE English Language A)

• In the first sentence, Chopin introduces the idea of Louise’s physical weakness

• It is significant that she has a heart condition:

  • This could reflect 19th-century attitudes to women being ruled by their emotions, and not by reason

• Women of the time (especially the relatively affluent women that Chopin describes) were expected to show strength in terms of their decorum:

  • Instead of demurely or privately grieving, Chopin describes Louise as succumbing to “wild abandonment”

  • Chopin is challenging societal norms of how women should behave

• Chopin describes Louise’s strength as inextricably linked to her husband’s absence:

  • When she retires to her room assuming her husband to be dead, Louise recognises a “certain strength” in her reflection in the mirror

  • The vital and vivacious scenes she observes from her bedroom window reflect a renewed vitality in Louise

  • Once she has fully grasped the consequences of her new freedom, she emerges from her room “like a goddess of Victory”

  • But as soon as the reality of her husband is made apparent to her once more, this new-found strength vanishes, taking her entire life force

• Chopin uses this short story to challenge what she saw as limiting societal attitudes about women:

  • If given the space to be strong, women can be strong

• Chopin seems to be arguing that marriage is something that shackles women and limits their potential:

  • In the story, Louise even confesses that she liked, even loved, her husband

  • It seems to be the institution of marriage — and the patriarchal organisation of the American family — that was so stifling to Louise’s life

  • At this time, following marriage, a woman would surrender all economic, and sometimes social, agency and power to her husband

  • With her husband’s death, there would be “no powerful will bending hers”

• Love, for Louise, is less important than “self-assertion”:

  • She may have loved her husband, but her love is no match for this new feeling of freedom

  • Chopin reveals that this newly-found freedom has literally given Louise a new lease of life (as only yesterday she had had suicidal thoughts)

  • Once the prospect of this freedom is taken away, it is indeed fatal: without it, Louise dies

• In The Story of an Hour, Chopin makes a compelling and politically brave case for women’s self-determination 

• The short story begins and ends with descriptions of Louise’s physical fragility:

  • Chopin could be suggesting that while a sense of strength, of self-determination, is possible for women, ultimately this state of freedom is only ever temporary

  • Society still places too many restrictions on women for them to be truly free, to escape their societal limitations

• Chopin uses visceral or powerful lexis to describe Louise’s reaction to hearing the news of her husband’s death:

  • She reacted in “wild abandonment” and in a metaphorical “storm of grief”

  • This is at odds with expected behaviour of women, many of whom would have been “paralyzed”

  • Chopin has her protagonist free herself of this repression, and emote loudly and publicly, to challenge gender expectations and to reframe what is considered appropriate

• Natural, springtime imagery is used to reflect Louise’s spiritual renewal:

  • The view outside her open window is “all aquiver with the new spring life”

  • The personified description — like of the rain’s delicious “breath” — is of animation, of vitality, foreshadowing Louise’s own reanimation

• She immediately dismisses whether she is experiencing an oxymoronic “monstrous joy” at her husband’s passing:

  • This shows that she is in control of her thoughts

  • Louise no longer needs to conform to society’s expectations of behaviour or etiquette and is able to express her true feelings 

• After contemplating the prospects of her unburdened future, Louise is described using a simile comparing her to a classical god:

  • “She carried herself … like a goddess of Victory”

  • She finally feels a sense of confidence, verging on invincibility

  • The fact that she “clasps” her sister Josephine’s wrist conveys a sense of agency, of a long-forgotten decisiveness

• The end of the story is abrupt and tragic:

  • Louise’s death (from a heart attack) is not described by Chopin

  • Even in death, she has no agency, no active presence in her household

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