"The Story of an Hour"

I thought "The Story of an Hour" was a decent short story. It wasn't the most exciting story i have ever read but it showed a real life scenario of this women loosing her husband in this accident. The only part i didn't understand was at the end when it said "But Richards was too late... she had died of heart disease- of joy that kills." The way it seemed to me was that she was just depressed after her husband died but also a little relieved. If Richards would of had the information right, that her husband wasn't even near the accident, none of this would of ever happened.

a rose for emily

I really liked the morbidity of this story. It paints this eloborate story of n old lonely slightly crazed woman who never leaves her home. fFrom the beginning you get this werid feeling about her, from the first initial conversation were she is denying to pay her taxes to the officers to to the conversation with the "druggist", you can tell that the story is leading you to a strange place involving her. I like how the town people broke into her house to spill that stuff so her house would'nt smell. I didn't get that part until we had the group discussin in class. I made sense after that beacuse you find out she has a rotting corpse preserved slighty in her bedroom. I know it sounds gross but i can completey could relate to that, to emily keeping and husband, her rose, in her house for so long. After she lost her father and was left alone for so long, not having anyone to relate to. no one to understand her just having yourself and no one else you get sad and isolated. I think thats how she felt until she met Homer. Homer gave her life and companionship. After he died she probably snapped and some how in her head justified keeping there even thou he was dead. Its actually really a sad story, plus the fact that it takes place in the south while it was devolping gives it a real dirty dark feeling. Anything to do with the south usually involves some type of darkness just beacuse the south wasn't a very good place throughtout history and even up untill the present.

"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.

A Rose for Emily


To understand A Rose for Emily, one must understand the environment and the setting of the story. One must realize during this time in the Deep South, as well as much of it today, the people had an immense sense of tradition and sense of duty. Knowing this sense of tradition and duty is a crucial role to understanding the story. I personally have not experienced the south and all there traditions, but I have experienced the similar traditions of small town and there environments. Everybody has to know everyone’s business and what’s going on in their lives.

Now the town had many different characters and one never really gets a sense of who is really narrating the story. So you truly get a sense of who Miss Emily is because you get the description of the whole town. The characteristics of Miss Emily seem to be an intense sense of tradition and duty. With having these senses she also seems very unwilling to change. This was shown when she was unwillingly to leave the corpse of her dead lover Homer Barron. Not only did she seclude herself from the town, but the town secluded her also, because of the harsh smell coming from her house.

The Story of an Hour

            When I finished reading the story, I was completely flabbergasted; I had no idea what the heck just happened. I had to re-read it a few more times and in-depth this time, I literally pored over every word searching for any hints that might explain what happened.
            What confused me the most was, “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully” (Chopin, 193-9.) I figured that was because she was experiencing sorrow and heartbreak for the first time following her husband’s death. But then the story twists into a plot of, “She did not stop to ask if it were not a monstrous joy that held her” (Chopin, 194-12). Joy? Someone who were happily married and someone who loved would never feel that way with death of someone very close to her.
            I honestly don’t think I have enough evidence in the story or details that could tell me whether Mrs. Mallard was abused (emotionally or physically). My theory that she was set up to be married to Bentley Mallard by her parents and I assume people who married without love would most likely be unhappy inside? This theory of mine is derived from the book where it said, “There will be no powerful will bending her in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature” (Chopin, 194-14) and “yet she had loved him – sometimes” (Chopin, 194-15.) It is possible to love someone when you have been with him for many years even when you don’t intentionally mean to love him hence the “sometimes” statement.
            So with the theory of mine, I actually think it makes sense why Mrs. Mallard is relieved to be let go of the “burden,” (for the lack of a better word) of her marriage. I think it is very interesting in the end when Mrs. Mallard died – as a reader myself, I know the thoughts in her mind, the emotions she felt before she died so it gives me another perspective of why she really died. Did she die from the joy that her husband was indeed alive? Or did she die from the sheer horror that he was alive, from actual heartbreak knowing she would now never be free? I believe it is the latter, because I think when the author said “joy that kills” (Chopin, 194-23) she is actually talking about the “monstrous joy that held her”.
            That joy is what made her want to live, didn’t it?

" The Story of an Hour"

When i first read this story i really did not understand it at all. I thought it was really confusing, but i was also reading it right before class started which probably didn't help. After i read through the story a couple of times and discussed it with my group I thought it was a good short story.
After re-reading i found out what "The Story of an Hour" was really about. When i first read the story i thought that the wife was really rude and mean. How could she have been happy to hear her husband had died? My first thoughts made me really dislike this story, and all i really had got from it was that a husband had died and the wife was happy! I also didn't really realise he was still alive until our group discussions inside of class. I liked the discussion in our groups because it made me look at the story in a total different way, this helped make the story more interesting for me. I also obviously had a better understanding and began to like this story more because you could look at it from many points of view. Was Mrs. Mallard happy her husband died because he was abusing her or just because she felt trapped in her marriage? Since divorce was not really accepted in these times maybe she felt some release to be out of a bad marriage? This was pointed out in my group discussion which made me re-think my view of the wife, and not really hate Mrs. Mallard so much. You never know what she was living through and why she felt the way she did about her husband. Another cool thing i thought we did in class was answer the questions on the board. About being in a long term relationship, being married, or the passing of someone close to you. Answering these questions made me see why people had different views of the story. Your life experiences can really effect how you view this short story.
I think the author Kate Chopin did a good job of writing this story it was full of small details that really make the story come together. Another thing that i thought was cool was the last line of the story when Mrs. Mallard dies. She wrote, " When she came they said she had died of heart disease-of joy that kills"(194) . You can look at this line in a couple different rays. One being that she had heart problems and died, or you could look at in another way. Maybe she was so hurt to find out that her husband had actually survived that she passed away, like dieing from a broken heart. Over all i do like the authors style and think she did a good job of writing this short story.

The Story of an Hour

Wow, this story was strange the first time I read it. I wasn't sure if Mrs. Mallard was sad about hearing her husband died or if she was relieved. I also was not sure if she killed herself or she died of her bad heart. When we talked in groups I opened my eyes a little more and read the story again. I took a lot more out of the story the second time. I think that she was not a happily married women. The time the story was written, women just stayed home and took care of the kids. Marriages are not like they are now, they married to help support the family. I think when she found out that her husband died, she thought she would have her own freedom. She would not have to answer to a man. Nothing would be the same. I don't know if there was abuse in the relationship, some things are still unclear. I do know from "and yet she had loved him_sometimes" that the relationship was not the best. I think that the ending was the best. Now that the husband is still alive, he will have to figure out how to live without out him wife.

Posting again.....

Well in college writing one I didn't have much luck with this but, it'll be different this time I hope. I'll be talking about "story of an hour", I hadn't read it until I came to class, because i was reading the wrong thing the teacher printed out *cough*. From what I read, seem very confusing at first, I had to reread it at least three times before I understood some of it. Mainly it was a story of sadness, or so we thought. There was a lady name Mrs. Mallard, who got news of her husband died in a crash, as soon as she receives the news she starts to cry. She runs into her room, locks the door and cries some more. Then here it takes a twist she says "Free! Body and soul free!" (Chopin 194). All of a sudden she was happy that he was died. This part of the story is the most confusing, because you don't know whats she is happy about. Either she was abused by her husband when he was alive, so she was happy that she doesn't have to suffer again. Thing that kind of cancels that out is when she says "kind, tender hands and the face that had never looked save with love upon her” (Chopin 194). So then you start to think maybe she wasn't abused after all, maybe she just wanted to be free of the marriage. As someone said in class maybe she was forced into the marriage, as if it was prearranged. You can never really know what it really is, since we the readers aren't the author, we can only brainstorm and come up wit ideas of what the author really means.

the story of an hour

I sort of liked reading The Story of an Hour. The first time I read it, it seemed like there was too much going on and I couldn’t really focus on what the story was actually about. After discussing it in class a little bit I have a much better understanding of what the story was about. Mrs. Mallard shifts, much like a bi-polar person, from extremely sad and remorseful to unbelievably happy. I sometimes find myself thinking about how I could benefit by someone else’s misfortune. I’m not talking about someone dying. Like if a fellow co-worker would happen to get fired and I get promoted to his position. It’s a bad deal that he had to get fired but at the same time I would be really happy to be getting a promotion. The text says that she is looking forward to all the years to come that she will be able to have all to herself (Chopin 194). This could be implying that perhaps she didn’t enjoy her marriage at all and was hoping that something like this would happen. It’s almost like she can’t decide whether or not she actually cared about this guy. I want to know it Mrs. Mallard had died because she was happy to see her husband alive or if she died because she really wanted him dead. I sort of understand where she’s coming from. I understand how unbelievably annoying it is to always have to be around someone that you don’t really enjoy being around. I’ve never wished for anyone to die just because of that though.

Yellow Wallpaper

I thought the yellow wallpaper was a very interesting story. After I read it one time, I read the little portion of information about the author and it said that the author herself happened to be sort of crazy, so you know I had to read it again. (Kirszner & Mandell 366) That alone is probably what made the story interesting for me. I think stories tend to be a lot more fascinating when it is based on true events especially when it involves a lady going crazy and seeing people walking around in wallpaper. Did they have any type of hallucinogenic drug back then? That would sure explain a lot. While I did somewhat enjoy this story, I, at the same time, disliked how it just kept dragging on. I think the author could’ve have shortened it up a little bit and still had the same effect. The author states at one point that she feels lucky that her husband, John, made her stay at that house because she can stand it so much easier than a baby. (Gilman 372) Was that to mean that she would rather be at the house that she said she hates more than be with her own child? What an idiot.