The appeal of Chopin’s The Story of An Hour

The appeal of Chopins The Story of An Hour, for me, is the its surprise ending. Its unexpectedness is tho heightened by the quiet start of the plot and the gradual build-up towards what the reader thinks would be a predictable ending, but for the writer to take everything away from the heroineand from the reader, too. Chopin uses Mrs. mallards point of view so we experience the narrative by her. When the story opens, we learn of Mr.Mallards death but this fact is only hinted at. Later on, we join her in her grief, from the weeping with sudden abandonment to the sporadic sobbing that nettly puts her sleep. When she awakes, Mrs. Mallard feels an emotion she could not place, and the reader begins to be as bewildered as she is. Chopin describes this yet unnamed sensation with metaphors such as stating how her bosom rose and fell until the exclamatory exclamation of on the loose(p), free, free We exalt with her realization and sympathize as she describes how she felt repressed in h er marriage.However, this ecstasy is short-lived when she sees her husbandalive after all. There is the nail-biting moment filling three paragraphs of her sister knocking hard upon the door. Chopin waits until the final paragraph to spring her surprise so that we also share in Mrs. Mallards shock and simply gape in hesitancy when we read the final line describing how Mrs. Mallard had died of heart diseaseof joy that kills.