Nurul Inayah

06211411012/VIII
English Prose I

ANALYSIS SHORT STORY

"The Story of An Hour"

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.
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.
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 hte 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.
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. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a
crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it
matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the 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.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold,
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.
 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 the 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.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy
that kills.

ANALYSIS

 THEME
Happiness That Kill

 PLOT
Initial situation:
Mallard's mother has a weak heart, she must be gently dealt with.
Conflict:
Mr. Mallard died and his friends had to deliver the news gently. not only her
husband who died but Mrs. Mallard would also die to hear the news.
Complications:
Mrs. Mallard was sad. In this story, the complication stage shows a very
complicated situation.
Explanation:
Mrs. Mallard showed a general or unexpected reaction of a widow to her unusual
husband's death, such as wanting to refuse to believe the news or accept it. She
immediately cried and this shows that she will become a widow.
 Climax:
Mrs. Mallard states that she is free, she wants to avoid that feeling but can not.
Eventually she realizes that she is indeed free, after the death of her husband, even
she is overwhelmed because she can not think of her feelings.
Tension:
Mrs. Mallard came out of his room and went to her sister and began to descend the
stairs with a feeling of gliding at the end of her triumph. Mrs. Mallard was sad but
she was also eager for her future and thought she was finally free.
Conclusion:
The doctors said Mrs Mallard died of heart disease, because of the happiness that
kill over her husband's death and with a weak heart to see her husband who had
died, Mrs. Mallard seemed to be a dilemma with his own feelings between sadness
over the death of her husband or happy because of Mrs. Mallard has been free
from her husband, and will live her life forward without any pressure.
As we know Mrs. Mallard dies, but unlike the death of her husband in the tragedy
of an accident.

 SETTINGS
This story is very limited because it is only in 1 hour, and there is a lot of time the
characters have to do anything and anywhere in that hour.

 CHARACTERS
- Brently Mallard
- Louise (Mrs. Mallard)
- Josephine (Sister of Mrs. Mallard)
- Richard (Friend of Mr. Mallard)
- Doctors
 CHARACTERIZATION
- Brently Mallard
The husband of louis who died of a train accident
- Louise (Mrs. Mallard)
Has a cold character and full of dilemmas, is overjoyed and a little saddened by
the death of her husband.
- Josephine (Sister of Mrs. Mallard)
Has a character that calms her sister over the death of her husband.
- Richard (Friend of Mr. Mallard)
Richard, Friend of Mr. Mallard in the newspaper office when the news of a train
accident was received by the name of a Brently Mallard leading the name as a
list of murdered victims.
Has a friendly character in terms of delivering sad news to mrs. mallard with
gentle and very careful.
- Doctors
Medical personnel.

 POINT OF VIEW
Third person in the protagonist's point of view, because at first the story begins
with what we do not know that something that mrs mallard do not doing and the
story ends after mrs mallard dies, and the readers will be shocked at the
explanation in the story that his heart is weak and his story will end very different,
although at first she was scared but she was also happy with the news of her
husband's death, and we would think that mrs mallard selfish or not love her
husband.