The mood of “The Story of an Hour” is both somber and cheerful. At the beginning of the story, Louise learns that her husband, Brently, has died in a railroad accident. The tragedy in the plot, alongside the language used to describe Louise’s reaction, establish the mood as dark and sinister:
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.
But after Louise locks herself in her bedroom to further process the news of Brently’s death, the mood lightens. The story describes the view out Louise’s window as “aquiver with new spring life,” and this cheerful, lively atmosphere is reflected in Louise’s demeanor. As she realizes that she’s no longer dependent on her husband, she reluctantly grows excited and reinvigorated:
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.
Together, these descriptions shift the mood from grim to lighthearted, as they convey rebirth, vitality, and possibility.
At the end of the story, however, the mood changes again when Brently is revealed to be alive, and Louise is so shocked that she suddenly dies:
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 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.
But Richards was too late.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills.
The quick, nonchalant way Louise’s death is presented puts an abrupt end to Louise’s newfound optimism—and with it, the story’s cheerful mood. The suddenness and finality of her death leave readers with a sense of hopelessness, as this suggests that the freedom Louise imagined for herself is perhaps only attainable in death.
