Rhetorical Analysis The short story “The Story of an Hour” by Kate O’Flaherty Chopin is about a young woman who is told of her husband’s death and how, in one hour, her life was changed forever. Kate’s life was in some ways similar to that of Mrs. Mallard’s, I believe her true feelings were reflected in her many writings. People who read her stories, particularly “The Story of an Hour” may have several different views of what the meaning might be, but because Kate lived in a time when women were expected to obey their husband, it makes me think that Kate may have felt the same way she portrayed the main character to feel when her husband died in 1883. (526) There are other stories that are about a woman having freedoms that weren’t …show more content…

Louise breathed a quick prayer that life might be long when only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. (528) her thoughts and emotions throughout the reading say that for themselves. The story starts out by telling us that Louise has a heart condition, so we are set up to think something might go wrong or that she is fragile. She retires to her room alone so that her sister or husband’s friend are not able to see her reaction to the news of her husband’s death, and she does not come out until she has calmed down and can replace her look of joy with a look of sadness. Kate writes that just as she was carrying herself like a goddess of Victory and wearing a triumphant look, her husband walked through the door. (528) This story is intended to help women of Kate’s time be at ease with what they are feeling about their own freedom that it is ok to feel the way they do, especially in the time they lived in. Even though she was silenced by society (Biography of Kate Chopin), she got her point across very well. Kate O’Flaherty Chopin wrote stories to share her feelings with the world, to help other women who were living the expected lives of an American women in the late 1800’s – early 1900’s. She believed in freedom, that a husband does not deserve the right to make his wife obey, that a woman should be able to live her life the way she wanted to and not the way society