Close Read Writing Prompt “The Story of an Hour” LITERARY ANALYSIS: How does the author use story elements such as setting, character development, or theme to develop the plot of “The Story of an Hour”? In your response, evaluate at least two of the story elements used by the author and how they shape the plot. Use evidence from the text to support your analysis.

Answer and Explanation:

The two elements I will be analyzing are setting and character development.

“The Story of an Hour” is a short story by author Kate Chopin in which the main character, Mrs. Mallard, finds liberation and freedom. The author skillfully uses the setting as a means to express Mrs. Mallard’s journey from subservient wife to free woman. After being told the news about her husband’s death, Louise Mallard locks herself up in her bedroom. No matter how big a bedroom is, it is still a confined space. The bedroom represents the life Mrs. Mallard has lived until this moment: confined, limited. However, as she sits there thinking, she looks out an open window. It is just a window, just an opening on the wall, but it is all she needs to start seeing things from a new perspective. The window and the landscape beyond it represent the life of possibilities Mrs. Mallard didn’t even know she had. It is the small yet crucial opening that allows new dreams, even a new self, to come into her life.

"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.  

Chopin also invests in character development to instigate the plot. Mrs. Mallard's character is, at first, revealed to be fragile in every way. Her friend and sister are afraid the shock of her husband's death will end up killing Mrs. Mallard due to her heart condition. As she goes up to her room, her sister comes to her door, begging her to open it, fearing Mrs. Mallard is making herself ill. However, over the time she spends in there, we are revealed there is much more to her character than the others can see. Mrs. Mallard realizes, while looking through that open window, that she is now free. Losing her husband, as sad as it is, has given her a sense of liberation, of finally having autonomy and authority over herself. There is no one to ask for permission, no one to please or to offer excuses and justifications to. She can do whatever she wishes – she can be as happy as she wishes. Chopin unveils that beautiful personality of Mrs. Mallard’s through her character’s thoughts:

And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

a. to introduce the audience to important characters .

b. to inform the audience where the story takes place .

e. to lay out specific details about different plot points.