"The Story of a Hour"

After reading “The Story of a Hour” I started to think about relationships and marriage. I realized that even though this story was written one hundred years ago, the same kind of problems exist today. Divorce rates are as high as they have ever been, not to mention physical and emotional abuse. The wife in this story is stricken with guilt, sadness, and even joy when she learns of her husband’s death. Looking back at the use of foreshadowing that the author used, it’s hard not to see some of the emotions coming. In the very first line Chopin states “Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with heart trouble” (Chopin 193). I took this as Mrs. Mallard having physical heart trouble, but looking back at the text it may have meant emotional heart trouble. The farther you read on you began to see all the twisted thoughts that Mrs. Mallard was going through. I enjoyed the story because it really makes you think about relationships still today and how nobody should have to be married to a person they want to live without.