Report: Selina Jamil’s Literary Analysis of Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour

The use of certain literary devices can produce an important message within a piece of literature, and coupled with external considerations like timeframe a reader can grasp the truest essence of the message. Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour tells the story of a female protagonist who receives word of her husband’s death. Chopin takes the reader through the protagonist’s experience of emotions as she reacts to such news. In her literary analysis of the story, Jamil underlines the importance of emotion in the message of The Story of an Hour. She argues that Chopin uses emotion as a vehicle for female liberation in a paternalistic culture. The protagonist, after all, is alive in the midst of late nineteenth-century gentility, a culture that favors female submission and male dominance. Jamil celebrates Chopin’s use of emotion as a function of individual growth instead of reason or unbiased perception.

From the start of The Story of an Hour Chopin creates an internal dialogue of the protagonist’s emotions. Jamil points out that Chopin eases the protagonist into the news of her husband’s death, yet the simple presence of the news becomes an injection of emotion into the protagonist’s otherwise apathetic world. She shuts herself in her room and experiences an extremity of emotions. Jamil argues that this injection of emotion is the reason for the extremity of the emotion because women of the era were expected to be docile and obedient. She brings up the imagery of the protagonist’s heart condition, but dismisses its physical importance by equating it to be “a surrendered heart to the culture of paternalism” (Jamil 216). This is an important distinction to point out. If the reader sees the heart condition as a physical issue, he or she will miss the intended consequence of emotional discovery as a result of an emotional depression or apathy.

Throughout the protagonist’s emotional journey in The Story of an Hour Chopin maintains a focus on the oddity of her range in emotion, nearly offending her with the revelation of feelings of exhilaration and personal fear. Jamil points out that Chopin does this to allow the protagonist to embrace her emotions. Through such an embrace she acts out a form of rebellion against the social conventions of her culture. The protagonist waits for a continued stream of emotion “fearfully” which is followed by a “monstrous joy” (Jamil 217). By doing this Jamil shows the initial news broken to the protagonist was only a door to a gushing torrent of natural emotion. The fact that she is fearful is a good thing as it is another new embrace.

Embracing emotion can be a powerful literary tool because it is a powerful human experience. Jamil brings up an interesting point by stating, “Just as she locks herself in her room and locks out her social world, she also locks out social conventions” (217). This was a necessary precursor to the protagonist addressing any emotion at all. By shedding the social conventions of restraint and gentile perception she was able to gain an emotional consciousness. The late nineteenth century was steeped in strict social expectations. This created a demanding dichotomy for women of the time. Women were expected to raise children, keep a fruitful home, and be the familial source of nurturing, yet they were also expected to practice restraint. Jamil does a good job of expressing how important that dichotomy is to the overlaying power of emotion in The Story of an Hour. By experiencing emotion outside of the social conventions of the time, the protagonist is being rebellious. This rebelliousness was required to be human, something she embraces as the story concludes.

Work Cited

Jamil, Selina. “Emotions in the Story of an Hour.” The Explicator, vol. 67, no. 3, 2009, pp. 215-220.