Reading Reflection on Story of an Hour - Essay Example

Reading Reflection When I sat down to read Kate Chopin’s short story “Story of an Hour,” I thought it would take a long time to read. I hadn’t flipped through the pages to see how long it really was because it didn’t really matter – we had to read the story for class anyway. So I blocked out an hour of my evening, reluctantly, so that I could read the story and not sound completely stupid during discussions. Before I even started, I was thinking of the author as a complete feminist, although I’m not sure why, and I was sure I was going to hate the story.

As I was reading, my attitude started to change. It started off well, with the death of the husband and everyone sneaking around the new widow, but I wondered where the author could possibly be going with this line of thought. I think that was what kept me reading was the curiosity of knowing how she was going to fill such a long story with such a weak character when her husband was already dead. Then she had Louise sneak off up to her bedroom to cry and I was resigned, again, to have to struggle through a very boring story.

It was entirely coincidental, but as Chopin was describing what Louise was seeing outside her window, I was feeling a cool breeze coming in from mine and looking out to see kids playing, wishing I was out there, too. I knew all I had to do was finish reading the story, though, and I would be done with my homework for the night so I tried to ignore it. The shock of Louise’s husband walking in the door made it hard for me to realize that she died on the stairs at first or that the story was over.

I had been prepared for something so much longer and more enjoyable that this ending was a massive disappointment to me. However, as I sat in my chair looking out the window and feeling the cold air on my face, I realized that the story was all about how women felt in Chopin’s time – trapped inside the house and inside roles where they weren’t permitted to run around in the snow or do what they wanted to do. They were like me facing my homework assignment, resigned to do what was expected but not really having much choice in the matter.

When Louise’s husband died, her spirit started to come to life as she began to anticipate all the joys that could be had outside her window, just as I had been making plans to go out and play as soon as I finished reading. These were thoughts that made her feel alive and free and happy, just as they had done for me. When her husband came walking in the door, it was as if someone had slammed the jail cell door on her face. All that freedom she had just been feeling was suddenly yanked away from her as if someone had suddenly made it clear to me that I would never have time to go outside and play again.

The grief that was caused by this thought was enough to make Louise’s heart stop beating. While I didn’t feel a shock powerful enough to kill me, the fact that I had been shocked enough to sit back in my chair and think more about the story before I had even put the book down was enough to give me an understanding of how this could have happened. I still consider Chopin to be a feminist writer, but I don’t look on that as being necessarily a bad thing anymore. The conditions that women lived in then, and may still in some areas, is more than I could take as a person and more than I think anyone should take.

We all have the right to be happy and to pursue whatever it is that makes us happy as long as we don’t harm others in the process, but trapping women in roles inside the house just because they are women instead of men is wrong and should not be done. Works Cited Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.”