Short Fiction: Understanding, Subtle Inference and Irony in "The Story of an Hour"

Hook: the hour that changed everything

Have you ever had news that you were supposed to feel one way about, but you felt something else? Maybe relief when an event you dreaded got cancelled, even though everyone around you was disappointed. You probably kept that feeling to yourself.

Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour is about a woman who has a feeling she is not supposed to have, alone in a room, for about one hour. It is roughly a thousand words long, and it ends with one of the most famous twists in American short fiction. Because so much is unspoken, it is perfect practice for the Grade 11 skill of subtle inference.

The story and its author

Kate Chopin (1850 to 1904) was an American writer from St. Louis, Missouri, who lived for years in Louisiana. Her stories often explore women's inner lives at a time when a married woman's legal and social identity was largely tied to her husband's. This story first appeared in Vogue magazine in 1894, under the title The Dream of an Hour. It is in the public domain, so you can read the whole story free online, and you should: it takes about ten minutes.

What happens: Louise Mallard has heart trouble, so her sister Josephine and her husband's friend Richards break the news gently: her husband, Brently, has been killed in a railway accident. She weeps at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, then goes to her room alone. She sits in a comfortable, roomy armchair facing an open window, where she sees the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. Slowly a feeling comes to her, and she whispers: free, free, free! She thinks of the years ahead: Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. Josephine begs her through the door to come out. Louise finally opens it and walks downstairs like a goddess of Victory. Then the front door opens. Brently walks in, a little travel-stained, carrying his bag and umbrella. He was far from the scene of accident, and did not even know there had been one. Louise dies. The last line: When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills.

(Content note: the story involves news of a death and the main character's death. Nothing is described graphically.)

Important ideas and supporting details

In Grade 11, demonstrating understanding means more than retelling the plot. You identify the most important ideas and the details that support them. For this story:

• Main idea: in a quiet hour alone, a woman discovers a self and a desire for freedom that her marriage had hidden.
• Supporting ideas: marriage as a kind of control (there would be no powerful will bending hers); the awakening of spring and new life outside the window; the gap between what others assume she feels and what she really feels; and the cruel irony of the ending.

A concept map is a good way to show this: the main idea in the centre, supporting ideas on branches, and one short quotation as evidence on each branch.

Making subtle inferences

Chopin never writes Louise was unhappy in her marriage. You have to infer it, and you have to be careful, because the story is subtler than that. Look at these clues together:

• Stated: And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not.
• Stated: Brently's face had never looked save with love upon her. (save = except.) He was not cruel.
• Stated: she will be free of a powerful will bending hers and realizes that people believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.
• Implied: the open window, the spring and the patches of blue sky suggest new life and possibility; she is in a room, looking out.

Putting these together gives a subtle inference: Louise's problem is not a bad husband but marriage itself, as her society arranged it, which took away her right to live for herself. A weaker inference (she hated her husband) ignores the evidence that he was kind and that she had loved him—sometimes.