The Story of an Hour 

                        ---The tragedy of freedom and death

　　From the beginning of the story, we can catch some rough information about the characters. There are four characters in the story: Mrs. Mallard, Josephine, Richards and Mr. Mallard. And Mrs. Mallard is the main character among the four.

　　The story mainly narrates the changing emotional feelings and the renascence of Mrs. Mallard’s spirits, after having heard the news of her husband’s death. But the story end up with Mrs. Mallard’s death instead of her husband’s. It is a surprising ending.

　　Although the story merely happened within an hour, we can find some valuable information from it, which is related to the people and the society at the end of the 19^th century. In Kate Chopin’s times, the male were in the dominated position while the female were in a humble position. And also the American main stream society ignored women's values and imposed constraints on spiritual freedom. It was extremely difficult for women to seek the independence or freedom of their own. Kate Chopin is a good example of an American realist. All her novels depict some special experience relate to women’s love, marriage and family, which intend to reveal the women’s constraints given by the traditional concept.

　　We can get more information when comes to the story itself and its characters. From the whole story, we can easily conclude its theme: freedom and death. Conflict between freedom and life has disturbed Mrs. Mallard, a traditional housewife, for a long time, the awakening of her selfhood was suddenly spurred after hearing the news of her husband’s death. She can have her own freedom for the rest of her life. She refreshed herself and opened the door of her room, which was full of symbolism. The door of her room is a strong symbol of freedom; she can get the freedom of her own and start herself the new life after walking out the door. But the ending is out of readers’ expectation. Both the language and the ending have a sense of irony. At the beginning of the story, we can see that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with heart disease, and she died of her heart disease in the end. At then, her husband returned safe and sound. But it is her intense joy of her freedom rather than her intense sorrow about her husband’s death carried her life off. It is a cruel reality which women can only pursue the freedom at the cost of their lives.

　　It is a wonderful story which has a suspense plot and a dramatic ending, revealing its theme with the ironic language and ending, and its symbol. It is a successful novel, which explore how human experience and social life are vividly reflected in it.