Response to "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin

I thought it was very interesting that the writer chose to write this story from the third-person perspective as opposed to a first person perspective. It immediately conveys a distance between the narrator and Mrs. Mallard. Distance is a common theme throughout the piece, in my opinion, because I believe there is a clear distance between Mrs. Mallard and her husband. Towards the end of the story, we finally get a description of her husband, Brently Mallard: he is "travel-stained" and "carrying his grip-sack and umbrella." It is interesting that Chopin chose to describe him as travel-stained when he was not onboard the train that had crashed, after all. I believe that this description, which is the only description we get of him, is hinting at a literal distance between he and his wife.

In the fourth paragraph, we get a description of the room that Mrs. Mallard is in: "an open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair." These adjectives starkly contrast with her current state of being trapped; they are open, and free, unlike her, and the lines that follow "a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul" are very dramatic and highlight this contrast even greater. Her body and soul feel trapped and confined when she desires to be free: free of her illness, from the room she is in, and potentially from her marriage.  A few paragraphs down, this notion is again highlighted when she is compared to a dreaming child in the lines "She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams."

In the eighth paragraph, we get a physical description of what Mrs. Mallard looks like. It is surprising to me that she is so young and is dealing with a diagnosis of heart trouble, "She was young, with a fair, calm face." The negative state that she is in is again highlighted in the follow lines, "But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky." These lines highlight her state of lifelessness, and her continued feelings of being trapped.

I am curious to hear everyone's thoughts on the last line of the story. "When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills." To me, this line ties together the feelings that Mrs. Mallard has been experiencing apart from her physical heart condition and wraps up the story appropriately. Do you all agree?