The Story of an Hour

I found that this story to be thought provoking. I think it was normal of Mrs. Mallard's family members to want to break the terrible news to her as easily as possible and with the least amount of pain possible. It's interesting because that is such a major thing in human nature. Sometimes people even avoid the truth to protect another person's feelings. I think that's an important thing in human nature, how we care for others.
Then came the emotional rollercoaster that Mrs. Mallard was sent on which I found extremely realistic. Loss provokes many emotions in a person and sometimes it is hard to sort through them. It was nice to read the line, “She knew she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment into the long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely.” It is in this line in which she realizes that she will cry again over her husband, and she will miss him, but she will also live.
This story also made me think about marriage. When Mrs. Mallard came to the realization that she was free: I thought that to be the last thing I would see in this story. Then also hearing her thoughts as she realized all the things she was missing and she could now do; it again made me think. A person could be in a perfectly healthy and happy relationship and still feel trapped. Sometimes with all the compromising you stop being yourself and you start being who that other person wants you to be.
The end was a huge surprise. It was almost a way of saying you can’t always get what you want. Mrs. Mallard finally realized how happy she would be as a free woman and then luck had it that her husband was not even dead. They had been so careful about saving her heart with the news of his death that it is almost ironic that him being alive is what killed her.