Question

"The Story of an Hour" is a very economical story, with little action or dialogue. Is this economy a strength or a weakness? Explain with evidence.

Answer 1

Answer and Explanation:

Being an economical story, with little action or dialogue, is a strength of "The Story of an Hour", by author Kate Chopin. As a matter of fact, I believe it was intentional on the author's part to make it this economical. Chopin wanted to convey the sense that her character, Mrs. Mallard, undergoes intense transformation in just one hour. She quickly and confidently goes from a subservient housewife to a free woman, all of that in the short time she spends locked up in her room after being told her husband has passed away. Making the story short conveys such rapidity. Providing little action or dialogue allows us to stay in Mrs. Mallard's mind, watching the progress of her thoughts and, consequently, of her feelings. Chopin does it in such an efficient way that, in just a few lines, we can observe the decisiveness of Mrs. Mallard's newly found identity and happiness:

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!

"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

She goes from a woman who thought loving her husband meant being inferior to and dependent on him to being a woman who acknowledges her love, the lack of love, and her independence from him. All of that portrayed in a few lines.