Irony in Many Ways, Kate Chopin\'s Short

¶ … Irony

In many ways, Kate Chopin's short story, "The Story of an Hour," is a case study in the use of the ironic. The exact opposite of what the reader expects to happen takes place in a number of different occasions in this tale -- from Mrs. Mallard's reaction to the news of her husband's death, to her reaction to the sight of him alive. The irony imbued within this story, as well as the poetic nature of Chopin's prose -- highlighted by her inimitable diction and the perspective she offers regarding the repression of women -- make this story perfect to interpret using the reader response approach to analysis. This particular lens denotes that Chopin's employment of irony actually reinforces the notion that for women, liberation is the absence of the domineering presence of a man and, conversely, this presence is akin to represion.

One of the facets that is most attractive about "The Story of an Hour" is its climactic ending which is heavily steeped in irony. Mrs. Mallard has received news that her longtime husband has died. At the end of the story, however, after Mrs. Mallard has given herself over to the idea of living without her husband's repressive nature, he returns home and the shock of seeing him kills the poor woman. The irony of this fact is underscored by the following quotation that closes out the story. "When the doctors came they said that she had died of heart disease -- of joy that kills" (Chopin, 1894). This statement is ironic on several levels. One is the fact that joy does not kill, and is generally believed to produce the opposite effect of the pain and agony of death: pleasure and felicity. Secondly, Mrs. Mallard did not die due to joy. She actually died when she realized that the preceding moments of sudden, intense feeling that she had endured due to her belief that she was free from her husband's overbearing presence were forcefully snatched away from her due to his appearance and what his appearance signified to her life. So it was not joy that killed her, it was the opposite of joy -- pain. It is highly important to note that Chopin utilizes this irony to underscore the fact that Mrs. Mallard had endured a life of repression due to her husband, which was a fairly common occurrence for women during the time the story was written, and a common subject in Chopin's writing (Leary 1970, p. 138).

The irony that characterizes Mrs. Mallard's initial reaction to her husband's death is decidedly salient in this story, and widely attributed to the fact that his death represents Mrs. Mallard's liberation from his presence. This reaction is an example of situation irony because one would expect that a woman would grieve and incur a degree of sadness at the death of her husband. Although Mrs. Mallard feels a small degree of this sentiment, her reaction is decidedly ironic because she instead feels a wild sense of elation due to her husband's death, which the following quotation proves.

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 (Chopin, 1894).

This quotation demonstrates how happy Mrs. Mallard is with the death of her husband, which is indicated by the fact that her imagination is conceiving a variety of ways and times in which she will be independent. This reaction and the joy that characterizes it is the opposite of the morbidity that the death of a husband or a loved one usually brings. Again, it is valuable to understand that this situation irony is used by the author to reinforce the fact that Mrs. Mallard's husband was unfairly domineering towards her, which is why "yesterday" -- when her husband was alive -- Mrs. Mallard had conceived a "shudder" at the thought of living a long time with him.