The Story of an Hour

by

Kate Chopin

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Story of an Hour makes teaching easy.

Louise Mallard Character Analysis

A woman troubled by a heart condition who is told that her husband, Brently Mallard, has died in a train accident. Due to her heart problem, she is not supposed to become overly excited, but—unlike how other women of the time period might react—she responds to this bad news with intense, wild grief. However, as she is grieving alone in her room for her husband, with whom she had shared a good marriage, Louise soon finds herself overjoyed at the prospect of the independence of widowhood, at the prospect of never again being dependent on a husband or in any way influenced, explicitly or implicitly, to do anything other than exactly what she wants to do. As she savors this newfound freedom she is flooded by joy, a joy that is snuffed out when she dies of a heart attack upon seeing her husband, who had in fact not been in the accident at all, walk through the front door. Her death suggests the actual impossibility of the sort of freedom she had briefly imagined.

Louise Mallard Quotes in The Story of an Hour

The The Story of an Hour quotes below are all either spoken by Louise Mallard or refer to Louise Mallard. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Women in 19th-Century Society Theme Icon
).
“The Story of an Hour” Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Louise Mallard, Josephine
Related Symbols: Louise’s Weak Heart
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Louise Mallard
Related Symbols: The Window
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Louise Mallard
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 218
Explanation and Analysis:

There would be no one to live for her 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.

Related Characters: Louise Mallard
Page Number: 218
Explanation and Analysis:

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!

Related Characters: Louise Mallard, Brently Mallard
Page Number: 219
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Louise Mallard, Josephine
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 219
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Story of an Hour LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Story of an Hour PDF

Louise Mallard Quotes in The Story of an Hour

The The Story of an Hour quotes below are all either spoken by Louise Mallard or refer to Louise Mallard. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Women in 19th-Century Society Theme Icon
).
“The Story of an Hour” Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Louise Mallard, Josephine
Related Symbols: Louise’s Weak Heart
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Louise Mallard
Related Symbols: The Window
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 217
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Louise Mallard
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 218
Explanation and Analysis:

There would be no one to live for her 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.

Related Characters: Louise Mallard
Page Number: 218
Explanation and Analysis:

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!

Related Characters: Louise Mallard, Brently Mallard
Page Number: 219
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Louise Mallard, Josephine
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 219
Explanation and Analysis: