Question

LITERARY ANALYSIS: How does the author use story elements such as setting, character development, or theme to develop the plot of “The Story of an Hour”? In your response, evaluate at least two of the story elements used by the author and how they shape the plot. Use evidence from the text to support your analysis. HELP ME PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 1

Answer and explanation :

The two elements I will be analyzing are setting and character development.

Louise Mallard is the main character in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”. After being told her husband has died, Mrs. Mallard finds liberation and freedom. The events in the plot leading to such a result are skillfully developed by the author through the setting. The bedroom where Mrs. Mallard locks herself up in represents her old life. Mrs. Mallard lived in the confined space, figuratively speaking, of marriage. She was dependent, limited in her actions and desires. However, the bedroom, just like her life, has a window. As Mrs. Mallard sits down and looks out this window, she begins to see things from a new point of view. It is just an opening on the wall, but it is all she needs. She realizes there is a whole world out there, filled with rain and patches of blue skies, with music and laughter. A whole world that did not stop because of her husband’s death. That portrays the life of possibilities Mrs. Mallard didn’t even know she had. She is now alive as she has never been before:

"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.  

Mrs. Mallard's character development is another tool Chopin uses to advance the plot. At first, Mrs. Mallard is portrayed as a fragile woman, whose heart is so weak it can kill her if she is scared or surprised. Her sister and friend fear so much for her health they will not leave her alone, even after she has locked herself up in the her room. However, over the hour she spends by herself, Mrs. Mallard goes from subservient wife to free woman. She realizes that, now her husband is gone, she has autonomy to be and do as she pleases. It turns out that Mrs. Mallard has a personality and dreams no one knew about. She was hungry for life:

And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!