Featuring a female protagonist who feels liberation at the news of her husband's death, "The Story of an Hour" was controversial by American standards in the 1890s.
Louise reacts with immediate grief and heads to her room where she gradually comes to the realization that she is happy that her husband has died.
[3] In a 2020 article, Cihan Yazgı provides a different perspective on why Chopin had to let Louise Mallard die at the end and analyses her death as a part of the story's tragic plot.
Drawing upon the Aristotelian formula and supporting his reading with stylistic evidence from the text, Yazgı argues that it is possible to understand the story's plot in terms of classical tragic elements of anagnorisis, peripeteia and catastrophe.
Meanwhile, Yazgı uses textual evidence to emphasize Chopin's stylistic mastery in creating a language that "reveal[s] in half concealing", which makes these tragic elements achieve their intended effects: The delaying of information creates a feeling of suspense and anticipation that eventually makes Mrs. Mallard's anagnorisis and catastrophe the more striking in such a short text.
[4] Bert Bender, an English professor at Arizona State University, offers a biographical reading of the text and argues that writing of the 1890s was influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of sexual selection.
This attitude finds its expression in "The Story of an Hour" when Mrs. Mallard questions the meaning of love and ultimately rejects it as meaningless.
[5] Lawrence I. Berkove, a professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, notes that there has been "virtual critical agreement" that the story is about female liberation from a repressive marriage.
Jamil claims that up until that point, Mrs. Mallard's life has been devoid of emotion to such an extent that she has even wondered if it is worth living.
Therefore, her newfound freedom is brought on by an influx of emotion (representing the death of her repressive husband) that adds meaning and value to her life.
However, Cunningham argues that "[T]he evidence of the story indicates that Louise dies not from grief at Brently's return, but from the emotional and spiritual strain that the news of his death occasions".
[8] In a 2013 article, Jeremy Foote, a researcher at Purdue University, argues that "The Story of an Hour" can be read as a commentary and warning about technology—specifically the railroad and the telegraph.
[9] While most readers infer Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" is about the awakening of feminine awareness and the struggle for freedom in a man's world, Li Chongyue and Wang Lihua offer a new analysis.
She was "pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach her soul" simply because she was tired of her life and needed a change.