It is a critical commonplace that Louise Mallard's death at the end
of Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour" results from Louise's shock
at seeing her husband Brently, reported dead in a train wreck, walk
in the front door of the Mallard house. For instance, Madonne M.
Miner states that "Upon seeing her husband, Louise suffers a heart
attack and dies."1 Barbara C. Ewell claims that when Louise's
husband "suddenly reappears, the report of his death a mistake, she
drops dead at the sight of him."2 Even if critics do not explicitly
claim that the sight of Brently causes Louise's death, they usually
assume it. In her recent biography of Chopin, Emily Toth writes
that Brently "walks in, having been nowhere near the crash. The
wife's weak heart fails."3 Yet Chopin's wording in the passage
concerning Louise's death leaves it open to question whether
Louise actually sees Brently's return. I believe that Louise does not
see him, and that the cause of her death lies elsewhere: in the joy,
which turns out to be more "monstrous" than Louise seems initially
to think possible, and the resulting emotional strain brought about
by her new understanding of her marriage and her supposed
sudden freedom from that marriage.4 Such a view alters the current
reading of the story. Specifically, it makes the irony of the doctors'
statement that Louise dies of "joy that kills" resound in ways that
are more complex than the common understanding of it grants
(354). A fresh understanding of just how ironic that statement is-and of how that irony applies to Louise as well as to the other
characters it is usually limited to--shows that Chopin's story is
much more radical than is usually claimed. "The Story of an
Hour" emerges not just as another story building and
experimenting with themes that reach their fullest statement in The
Awakening. Rather, the story portrays the position of women in
late nineteenth-century American society as so bleak that the
attempt to break from the life-denying limitations of patriarchal
society is itself self-destructive.5 It is Chopin's sharpest criticism of
American society, one that in her other fiction she found no way to
ameliorate.
The passage concerning Louise's death is brief. Coaxed from her
room by her sister, Louise and Josephine descend the steps.
Brently enters and
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 joy that kills.(354)
Nowhere in the passage does Chopin state that Louise sees Brently
enter. Indeed, while Chopin describes the actions of Josephine,
Richards, and Brently, the reader learns only in the last sentence,
after the events are over, that Louise has died. This is in keeping
with the thematic development of the story. Mary E. Papke has
noted that the reader learns Louise's first name only after Louise
accepts her "new consciousness" of freedom; before that, Louise is
"Mrs. Mallard."6 One can extend this line of analysis further: as
long as Louise is "Mrs. Mallard" or as long as she remains in her
room after hearing of Brently's death, the reader has access to
Louise's thoughts. However, once Louise leaves her room, once
she re-enters society as an independent individual, her thoughts are
her own. Neither the other characters nor the reader has access to
them. As Louise descends the stairs, other characters and the
reader can only surmise what Louise feels by noting the "feverish
triumph in her eyes" and the way she carries herself "unwittingly
like a goddess of Victory" (354). With Brently's return, with the
reconstitution of her marriage and previous social position, Louise
once again vanishes among her husband and relatives. She
disappears even from the description of her own death.
The crux of the passage concerning Louise's death is the
ambiguous phrase describing Richards moving in front of Brently
to "screen him from the view of his wife" (354). As I've shown,
most critics believe this indicates that Richards moves to screen
Louise from seeing Brently's return. The wording also carries the
not-very-hidden undertone that Richards moves to screen Brently
from seeing Louise's collapse.7 Yet Chopin does not clarify the
action further. The reader cannot be certain that Louise sees
Brently's return. Any interpretation that puts the disappointment
and shock brought on by his return as the cause of Louise's death is
as much a projection onto the events as the doctors' belief that the
joy and shock caused by Brently's appearance are to blame. Yet
Chopin's tangled wording invites unraveling. Its very awkwardness
is unusual. The other key ambiguous or ironic statements in the
story--that Louise is "afflicted with a heart trouble" and that the
doctors believe she died "of joy that kills"--are far more natural in
their phrasing (352, 354). One could argue that the writing's
awkwardness embodies the awkwardness of the scene it describes,
but that guide does not apply to Chopin's writing as a whole. The
reader doesn't flounder in weighty prose when Edna Pontellier
drowns herself. Besides, the phrase is not confused--there is no
evidence that Chopin has gotten sloppy and garbled what she
meant to communicate. Rather, she has used a phrase that will not
settle into a single referent, that refers to both Louise and Brently
at once. Richards is trying to screen each from the other; he is
trying to block recognition. However, in one of the ironies that the
other characters cannot know, Louise has already recognized what
her life with Brently was like; there's no blocking that now.
Chopin leaves many clues as to the probable cause of Louise's
death. The reader learns immediately that Louise is "afflicted with
a heart trouble" (352). Her first response to the news of Brently's
death is to weep with "sudden, wild abandonment" (352). She then
retires to her room, where she feels "pressed down by a physical
exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her
soul" (352). In her room, Louise senses "something coming to
her," which she awaits "fearfully," struggling to "beat it back with
her will" as her "bosom rose and fell tumultuously" (353). What
comes to her is the realization that she is now "'free, free, free!'"
(353). Her imagination excitedly considers the days ahead of her,
days in which "she would live for herself" with "no powerful will
bending hers in that blind powerful persistence with which men
and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon
a fellow-creature" (353). As she descends the stairs before her
collapse, there is the "feverish triumph" in her eyes as she carries
herself "unwittingly like a goddess of Victory" (354). After that,
the reader learns only that Louise cries out and collapses,
apparently at the same time Brently returns.
Chopin pays a great deal of attention to two areas of Louise's
experience: the strain placed upon her physical system by the
various shocks--the surprise of her husband's death, the grief that
this news brings, the realization that her life is now utterly
changed, and the understanding that this change is quite possibly
for the better--that sweep over her, and the strain upon her spiritual
outlook as she struggles to understand the apparent freedom
opened to her. As Chopin makes clear, both sap Louise's strength
to the limits of what she can bear. And beyond. The evidence of
the story indicates that Louise dies not from grief at Brently's
return, but from the emotional and spiritual strain that the news of
his death occasions. That this happens as Brently enters is
interpreted in a melodramatic way both by the story's characters
(who believe she has died from joy at seeing Brently return) and
the story's critics (who believe she dies from shock and
disappointment at seeing him return). In each case, the
interpretations confirm what that group of witnesses would like to
believe happened, according to their views of patriarchal marriage.
However, Chopin rejects various purely melodramatic moments of
death for Louise. Louise does not collapse immediately upon
hearing of Brently's death, nor immediately upon realizing the
freedom open to her. Louise collapses only after what we could
call the adrenaline rush of her shock has worn off and her already-
weak heart can no longer bear the strain placed on it. That this
happens at the very moment of Brently's return is more ironic than
melodramatic.
A more focused understanding of the probable cause of Louise's
death thus alters the reader's understanding of the irony of the
story's close, in which doctors claim that Louise died of "joy that
kills" (354). The tone and quality of this final irony has divided
critics. George Arms flatly states that it is "too neat if not too
cheap."8 Emily Toth, however, finds the doctors' claim "an
occasion for deep irony directed at patriarchal blindness about
women's thoughts."9 Yet Toth also detects in Louise's death a
giving-in to that blindness on Chopin's part. Toth argues that
Louise must die at the end of "The Story of an Hour" because
the idea that she could live on as a widow glad of her husband's
death would have been "much too radical, far too threatening" for
editors and readers in the 1890s.10
Perhaps. However, the end of "The Story of an Hour" is more
radical still than Chopin's critics are willing to allow. As Peggy
Skaggs notes, Chopin in her fiction associates three qualities with
the "full life": "love, place, autonomy."11 None of these qualities
provides a very good description of Louise's situation in the
moments before her death. Love? The point is mooted by Louise's
sudden death, but the reader is given no clues to indicate that
Louise has had a lover while married (as had the deceased wife in
"Her Letters" or, probably and however briefly, as has the living
wife in "The Storm"). While Louise may gain some autonomy
from Brently's death, that autonomy is so limited as to perhaps be
nothing more than further isolation, for now her position would be
defined as that of a widow, so that any current freedom is based on
her relation to the past (a dead husband) more than the future. And,
in a further irony, the conditions of her future freedom would have
been largely shaped by her husband's will--his written wishes to be
carried out after his death. More fundamentally, though, once
Louise discovers--or begins to formulate--an autonomous self,
once she decides that she will no longer tolerate her will being
bent, that she will control her life fully, there is no place for her in
a patriarchal society. Her increased autonomy results in a loss of
any place for her in male-dominated society. Since there is no
other society in which she may find a place, when Louise ceases to
exist in relation to the patriarchal society around her, she ceases to
exist at all.
In a more sudden fashion, then, Louise meets the same end as Edna
Pontellier: death. And for the same reason. There is no way for her
to live, no support for her life. (Edna drowns and Louise dies of
heart failure: both deaths involve, literally and metaphorically, the
loss of some foundation necessary to live). Martha J. Cutter,
writing about The Awakening, points out that Chopin "dramatizes,
but finally rejects, the dream of a maternal, feminine, poetic
discourse that is not already inscribed within hegemonic
language."12 According to Cutter, Edna learns that "there is no
feminine voice 'out there' that can be used to disrupt the voice of
patriarchy."13 Cutter does note, however, the possibility of Chopin's
characters to develop a "covert voice" that forms at least a partially
successful "hollowing out" of patriarchal language from within-though she points out that such voices are usually "erased by
madness or suicide."14 Yet even if Louise begins to develop a
covert voice, it leads her to refuse to compromise with the
prevailing social structure. Louise cannot, could not, hollow out
patriarchal language from within, because she refuses to remain
within. Even this speculation takes us too far from the actual story.
For if Louise does gain any autonomy from reports of her
husband's death, she herself dies too soon to act upon it.
Chopin's irony at the end of "The Story of an Hour" is directed,
then, at more than men's blindness. It also presents a sharp portrait
of what a woman will find should she make a strong claim for
autonomous selfhood. Should she break free of patriarchal
definitions (wife, widow, lover) in her own mind, she will find no
other social system to accept her: women have been unable to
create a system of their own. The female self will have gained
autonomy only to find that she has no life to lead.
Notes
1. Madonne M. Miner, "Veiled Hints: An Affective Stylist's
Reading of Kate Chopin's 'Story of an Hour,'" The Markham
Review 11 (1982) 29.
2. Barbara C. Ewell, Kate Chopin (New York: Greenwood, 1988)
89.
3. Emily Toth, Unveiling Kate Chopin (Jackson: U of Mississippi
P, 1999) 10. Other critics who believe that Louise sees Brently's
return include George Arms, who states that Louise "dies of a heart
attack when she finds her husband is still alive." George Arms,
"Kate Chopin's The Awakening in the Perspective of Her Literary
Career," Essays in Honor of Jay B. Hubbell, ed. Clarence Gohdes
(Durham: Duke UP, 1967) 225. Per Seyested writes that Brently's
appearance "proved fatal" to Louise. Per Seyersted, Kate Chopin:
A Critical Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1969) 58.
Thomas Bonner, Jr., writes that when Brently arrives home, Louise
"sees him and collapses." Thomas Bonner, Jr., The Kate Chopin
Companion (New York: Greenwood, 1988) 144. Angelyn Mitchell
argues that "denied self-assertion causes Mrs. Mallard's demise,"
the self-assertion denied by Louise's seeing Brently. Angelyn
Mitchell, "Feminine Double Consciousness and Kate Chopin's 'The
Story of an Hour,'" CEAMAGazine: A Journal of the College
English Association, Middle Atlantic Group 5.1 (1992) 63. Bernard
Koloski claims that when "Louise sees her husband come in the
door," she "dies of heart failure." Bernard Koloski, Kate Chopin: A
Study of the Short Fiction (New York: Twayne, 1996) 4. Even
Lawrence I. Berkove, who concentrates more closely than other
critics on the destructive and delusive nature of Louise's joy, writes
of Louise that "her husband's unexpected return ends [Louise's]
delusion," implying that Louise sees Brently's return. Lawrence I.
Berkove, "Fatal Self-Assertion in Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an
Hour,'" American Literary Realism 32.2 (2000) 157.
4. Kate Chopin, "The Story of an Hour," The Complete Works of
Kate Chopin, ed. Per Seyersted (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP,
1969) 353. Cited parenthetically hereafter.
5. Berkove, too, argues that what Louise desires would involve a
"radical loneliness" and concludes that her goal of fully
independed selfhood is "not obtainable in this life" (155, 158).
However, as I will show, he reaches his conclusions following a
line of thought quite different from mine.
6. Mary E. Papke, Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of
Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton, Contributions in Women's
Studies 119 (New York: Greenwood, 1990) 63.
7. A view held by Berkove, also: "Richards attempts vainly to
screen Bently from the view of his wife" (156).
8. Arms 225.
9. Emily Toth, "Kate Chopin Thinks Back Through Her Mothers:
Three Stories by Kate Chopin," Kate Chopin Reconsidered:
Beyond the Bayou, ed. Lynda S. Boren and Sara deSaussure Davis
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1992) 24.
10. Toth, Unveiling 10.
11. Peggy Skaggs, Kate Chopin (Boston: Twayne, 1985) 53.
12. Martha J. Cutter, Unruly Tongue: Identity and Voice in
American Women's Writing 1850-1930 (Jackson: U of Mississippi
P, 1990) 89.
13. Cutter 109.
14. Cutter 101. Cutter also notes that the "Resistant feminine
voices of radicalized characters ... go unheard" (101). And, should
even a whisper get through, madness or suicide allows whatever
threat such a covert language might form to be discounted--among
critics as well as other characters. Berkove states that his essay was
written to counter the "strong, and at times extreme, feminist bent"
underlying recent discussions of the story (152). Yet he seriously
misreads Louise's belief that following Brently's death there will be
no will bending hers, as well as her idea that "a kind or a cruel
intention" makes such a bending "no less a crime" ("Story" 353).
Berkove states that Louise has a "distorted" view of love, and he
claims that Louise thinks love itself is a crime, rather than the
bending of another's will for which love can act as a mask or
motive: "Believing love a 'crime' cannot be considered a normal
attitude," Berkove writes with the passive voice certainty of the
morally assured (155). This allows him to declare that Louise or
her beliefs are "abnormal," "unreasoning," and "aberrant," and to
conclude that "In truth, Louise is sick, emotionally as well as
physically" (152, 154, 155, 156).
Source Citation
Cunningham, Mark. "The Autonomous Female Self and the Death
of Louise Mallard in Kate Chopin's 'Story of an Hour.'." English
Language Notes 42.1 (Sept. 2004): 48-55. Rpt. in Short Story
Criticism. Vol. 110. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resources
from Gale. Web. 31 July 2011.
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