Kate Chopin · 1894 · A hunt for the techniques you already know
Click each number. Before you do — what was the shape, and what was the technique?
“The Story of an Hour” was written by Kate Chopin in 1894. It is one of the shortest stories in the English canon — barely a thousand words — and one of the most savage. Chopin lived in Louisiana, was widowed young, and wrote about women’s inner lives at a time when many critics thought women did not have them.
The whole story takes place in an hour. A woman is told her husband has died in a train accident. She goes to her room alone. What she feels there is not what we — or her family — expect. And then the front door opens.
The first line of the story tells us something quietly important. Watch for it.
Read aloud, together. Stop wherever a prompt appears.
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.
“Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble…” (the very first words)
“Veiled hints that revealed in half concealing.”
“She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment.”
This is the heart of the story. Read slowly. Almost every line has a technique in it.
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.
“facing the open window”
“tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life”
“patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds”
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.
“as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams”
“whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength”
“creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her”
“free, free, free!”
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 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.
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.
“a monstrous joy”
“a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely”
“Free! Body and soul free!”
The ending takes less than a page. Read slowly. Almost every sentence will turn.
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.
“She was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.”
“like a goddess of Victory”
Some one 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 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 joy that kills.
“a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella”
“But Richards was too late.” (a paragraph of one sentence)
“Of joy that kills.”
All ten in barely a thousand words. Click each card to see one example you found.
“repression” · “monstrous joy” · “a very elixir of life.”
“the storm of grief” · “a long procession of years” · air as elixir.
“as a child who has cried itself to sleep” · “like a goddess of Victory.”
Spring trees, rain, sparrows, patches of blue sky · the grip-sack and umbrella.
The open window — freedom. “Heart trouble” — the inner one and the medical one.
Freedom “creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her” · trees “aquiver with life.”
“Like a goddess of Victory” for a small private woman opening a bedroom door.
The whole story. “Of joy that kills” — the doctors are wrong about which joy.
The first sentence: “Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble.” The gun is on the table.
“free, free, free!” · “Body and soul free!” · “life might be long” (twice, with opposite feeling).
Pick a moment when a character receives news that everyone expects them to feel one way about, but they secretly feel the opposite. Write one paragraph (around 80–100 words) showing the inner feeling, while a window or door or weather quietly does the symbolic work. You must use at least three of the ten techniques. Mark them as you go: (5 symbolism), (9 foreshadowing), and so on.