Mid-term writing test

1.Louise's opinion of marriage is negative. She feels that the woman is too submissive to her husband and cannot express herself freely. We can see this in the twelfth paragraph.

3. She is awaiting the future with great joy: no one to tell her how to behave or what to do. We can see her opinion clearly in the line '' There would be... ;she would live for herself.''

4. Richard and Josephine thought the Mallard's wedding was a beautiful one: Louise was a devoted, young, caring wife who loved her husband enormously. However, Richard loved Louise; therefore, her loss was his gain.

7. She is sad because her husband has died and dying is always something hard to accept. However, she feels joy because she did not really love him and it is more a liberation than a loss.


There are many instances of irony in the story ''The story of an hour''. Indeed, we can notice certain elements hinting towards an ironic atmosphere, while reading. We can see this in the message of the story which is we must not judge someone by his looks, and in the themes of marriage and relationships. For example, Richard is the husband’s friend, but enjoys Brently's death because he is also in love with Louise; so, he is very kind and considerate towards her, not because of her loss, but to use this situation to become more intimate with her.

Also, with the presence of irony in this context, we can deduce the message of the story as: things aren’t always what they seem. As explained before, Richard is supposedly sad for his best friend, but is rather happy for himself. We can feel how he exaggerates his sadness when he says he has to hasten '' in bearing the sad message''. The sad message is not at all sad in his case. Furthermore, the last sentence explains the cause of Louise's death: she died of happiness. However, we know, as the reader, that this is not the case. On the contrary, she was perfectly happy with her husband’s death and had a heart attack because she saw her horrible, repressing, submissive, unhappy life reappear in the form of the man she did not love. Moreover, the author explains to us what is truly marriage: the silent cage to a woman’s freedom. Indeed, it is silent because she cannot express her misery. The general feeling, outside the main character’s head, shows how the other characters think Louise happy in her perfect marriage. But it being not the case is the biggest irony of all. We can conclude that marriage is not seen as a wonderful thing by all of the concerned indivuals. This also demonstrates how the relationship between everyone is mostly shallow. Josephine does not understand the pain her sister must endure in being a wife and believes, like everyone else, that she died of happiness. Furthermore, Richard should be truly sad for his friend’s death, but in not being so we see that their friendship was not as strong as it seemed.

In conclusion, ''The story of an hour'' can be described by the great presence of irony in its plot, characters, and themes: marriage and relationships seem harmonous on the outside, but are mostly shallow on the inside. It makes us requestion ourselves about the way we see one another: we must look deeper than what we only see with our eyes.


Word count: 434