Springtime Imagery in The Story of an Hour

In “The Story of an Hour”, Kate Chopin utilizes strong imagery to let the reader to really feel Mrs. Mallard’s true emotions. Visuals in a story can give an huge amount of details about a character. What the character sees out a window can tell us their point of view on how they view the globe. Imagery assists the reader place themselves in that character’s footwear. The descriptive information allow us to totally encounter the story being told. By experiencing what the character feels, crucial themes can be revealed. One of the primary themes in “The Story of an Hour” is the theme of freedom. This is clear by means of Mrs. Mallard’s repetition of “Free, totally free, free” under her breath but is also observed through Chopin’s use of imagery in a significantly less direct way. In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”, the image of the “delicious rain” and “quivering trees with new spring life” each perform together to bring out the theme of a new starting.

Following hearing the news of her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard weeps uncontrollably and proceeds to lock herself in her space. Even though she is quite emotional, this is the variety of reaction you would anticipate from a new widow. She sits down in her chair and was “pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach her soul”(Paragraph three). Then she decides to look out her window and, “She could see in the open square just before her house the tops of trees that had been all aquiver with the new spring life”(Paragraph four). This line is very important as spring is related with a new starting. Rather than feeling her life is more than soon after the passing of her husband, she feels it is just starting. Spring represents renewal and birth. Mrs.Mallard is starting to really feel this sense of freedom and realizes what her husband’s death indicates for her life. Winter has now died, and spring has finally arrived. Winter is generally associated with isolation or sadness, which are feelings that Mrs. Mallard most likely felt in her marriage. Following a long and dreadful winter, Mrs. Mallard is finally seeing the beauty inside the globe as she appears out the window and sees her new life ahead of her. The open window provides a clear, bright view into the distance and Mrs. Mallard’s bright future, which is now unobstructed by the demands of yet another individual. As Mrs. Mallard starts to finally see the world as it is, losing her husband is not a excellent loss so significantly as an chance to move beyond the “blind persistence” of the bondage of marriages back then. Mrs. Mallard reaches her conclusions of independence by means of the atmosphere, the imagery of which symbolically associates Mrs. Mallard’s private awakening with the beginning of life in the spring season.

The subsequent line in the story reinforces the theme of a new starting. Right after seeking at the “quivering trees”, Mrs. Mallard says that “The scrumptious breath of rain was in the air.” Because Chopin mixes senses by using a word typically connected with taste to describe living (“breath”), her word decision is also an example of synesthesia, which mixes sensory photos. Much more importantly, rain is normally observed as a symbol of sadness or grief. By providing Mrs. Mallard a good reaction to the “delicious breath of rain”, it alterations the reader’s point of view on the story. Mrs. Mallard’s moment of grief rapidly passes as her outlook on life changes as she sits in her space and thinks about her future. When she realizes her newly found independence and all that it entails, she feels as if she is starting life anew. As an alternative of rain becoming a symbol of sadness and mourning for her husband, it serves as a cleansing. A cleansing that washes away her previous life and offers her a fresh start off. She is now free, totally free to reside her life the way she pleases without having obtaining to answer to any person not even her husband.

These lines with each other serve as the initial clues to the reader to show that there is much more going on in the story than just somebody who has lost their husband. Despite the fact that they are two brief sentences, the imagery they create assists the reader really feel the encounter that Mrs. Mallard is going via. They are pivotal sentences where the mood shifts from mourning death to the prospect of a new starting. As she sits in her comfortable chair, gazing out her window, dark clouds component to show the blue sky, and the promise of rain also brings the “new spring life” that she sees in the trees. Springtime imagery gives a sense of renewal that underlines Chopin’s notion that Mrs. Mallard is on a journey to a new life.