In modern day society, 42% of all first marriages fail, showing obvious signs of woman independence. However in the late 1800s marriage was an everlasting thing, no matter how unhappy a person may have been. Given how Mrs. Mallard, from the short story “Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, took the news of her husbands untimely death, although she sobbed at first, gives insight that she was just set free of the burden of marriage. She perished unhappily given the idea of her being set free, her lack of emotion, and her repressed feelings shown throughout the story.
Mrs. Mallard was a slave in a sense for her husband, much like many other married woman of the time. She lived to serve him, this drove her to an unhappy, enslaved mentality giving her the sense of freedom at her husbands death. Despite her newly found freedom, as a woman in the late 1800s she would not be able to find work or any way to support herself for women were heavily looked down upon during this time period and forced them to stay with their husbands. When Mrs. Mallard whispers to herself “Free! Body and soul free!” she’s simply showing how unhappy she was during the course of her marriage and Mr. Mallard’s death was an escape route. To this woman on the verge of insanity and a weak heart, she had been a prisoner to marriage’s cold hands, and this was a quick escape from prison.
When someone dear exits the gates of life and enters those of death, it brings tragedy upon all whose close and particularly the spouse. However “She did not hear the story as many woman have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sisters arms.” giving her the image of an individual who wept almost with joy opposed to absolute sorrow as most would. To this woman, this marriage of hers was hell, and she was finally out of it; her emotions mixing between happiness and sadness, forming the emotionless, lifeless corpse she will soon become.
She had repressed feelings about her marriage with Mr. Mallard given the slavery manner of it. Mrs. Mallard kept it hidden in the back of her head that she wanted out of the marriage, but that was frowned heavily upon during the 1800s and she would never make it on her own. Those feelings were kept hidden deep inside her, where they would never come up again. However given her heart conditions, she had to be kept from doing anything, restricted and restrained like a slave bearing leg irons and belly chains; treated like an animal. This only deepened those repressed feelings toward her husband and the marriage.
Kate Chopin had intended “The Story of an Hour” to be one of a woman whom had an unhappy marriage and was finally released from it without criticism when his untimely death occurs. She intended Mrs. Mallard to be happy and feel set free from this hellish marriage, only to be then destroyed in the end by “joy that kills”. Mrs. Mallard died unhappily at the sight of her husband because she was deeply saddened by his return in opposition to the typical hysterical excitement of a widowed woman seeing her love again. With her sense of freedom and release from her marriage, lack of emotion to her husbands death, and repressed feelings about her marriage and her escape from it, Mrs. Mallard died an unhappy woman at the sight of her returned, presumed dead husband.