Thematic issues in Chopin's "The Story of an Hour,": plot, setting, voice, characterization, symbols, foreshadowing, and/or irony.
Chopin's "The Story of an Hour," is about a woman's heady realization that she is free with the death of her husband. Not that her husband was unkind to her but that she had surrendered her whole life to him and now that he was allegedly dead, she realized that she could live her life for herself. Her husband returns and the woman die, bystanders thoughts from "the joy that kills." The story seems to imply otherwise: the woman's dreams of freedom had suddenly vanished.
The story is replete with thematic issues heralding its subject. There is the setting: The onset of spring. Spring is a break from winter with a promise of new life and hope. Mrs. Mallard has just had her tempestuous cry, she has just experienced the bleakness and darkness of winter; hope -- spring -- is...
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.
Characterization also points to thematic content. The woman is called "Mrs. Mallard" at the story's beginning. She is still the possession of another. In making the transition to realization of freedom, she becomes known as the anonymous 'she'. And, finally, when embracing her freedom and becoming herself - "Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering - the character is called by her first name "Louise.'
We have the irony here too. Her sister begs her at this point to open the door; she is concerned of Louise…
