Journal

This week I read a short novel called The Story of an Hour. The narrator reveals that Mrs. Mallard, the leading character in it, was afflicted with a heart trouble, so that the narrator has already hinted the orientation of this story cautiously. In the first paragraph, the narrator pointed out the fact of Mr. Mallard’s death. And then in the second paragraph, the narrator introduces the other main characters, Josephine and Richards, to make their identities and the reasons why they come on stage clear. After these two paragraphs, the narrator concentrates only upon Louise Mallard deliberately.
The narrator describes that Mrs. Mallard did not hear the story as many women have heard the same. On the contrary, she has an intense response, weeping at once, with sudden, wild abandonment. It seems that she has been strangled to death, and now someone’s hands loosen the neck to make her breathe fluently. She feels so relieved and delighted that she breaks into tears. However, Josephine and Richards in front of her don’t know what she is thinking; rather, they believe Mrs. Mallard is too grieved to put herself together. Mrs. Mallard, perhaps, wants to enjoy this rare moment alone, in secrete, so that she goes away to her room. Then, she begins to face her own consciousness. This part is the major idea of the story which the narrator tells. The narrator uses plenty of symbols to correspond with her feelings. For instance, the trees before the house were aquiver with the new spring life. The symbolic technique the narrator expressed Mrs. Mallard’s feelings with is brilliant, mordacious and felicitous. In this story, I think “air” and “window” are the motifs. Mrs. Mallard has had a suffocative life. She could not breathe the scent of freedom when living with her husband. Mrs. Mallard needs the air! She longs for the delicious breath of rain in the air as she was the leaf in the spring. She finally gets through the tedious and dreary winter. Before that she thought she was living in a confining chamber, like a jail without a window. But now, even though she becomes a widow, she gets a window to make her breathe and see the outside world. Mrs. Mallard, like a newborn baby, cannot wait for looking forward to the future filled with surprises and joys. Such vicissitude probably is her dream she has been waiting for her whole life to meet. She couldn’t keep pretending she is sorrowful anymore; thus, she unintentionally shows the bittersweet feelings on her face. Unfortunately, the happiness is like a zephyr. She cannot believe it’s a downright fraud that Mr. Mallard is totally safe and sound. The entire incident, obviously, is too much to her. Mrs. Mallard cannot stand it. It’s just like there are so many airs of joy and freedom coming to her, and suddenly all of them are brutally drawn off. If God takes the happiness, hope and blessing away from us, how can we live still? Such prank betrays Mrs. Mallard to her death.
The story is narrated by omniscient point of view, so the readers interpret Mrs. Mallard’s death is because of the attack of Mr. Mallard’s coming back to ruin her dream. But other characters in the story think that she is too joyful about her husband’s coming back to face the fact. It is tricky that the doctors said the joy that kill her. We know the fact is that her husband stops her joy so that she dies. And those characters believe that Mr. Mallard brings the joy to her but she couldn’t take it from previous miserable moment so that she dies. The author is wise to make the end ambiguous.
I like such sudden, unexpected and neat way to bring to a closure. It makes me recall the films in French New Wave. The filmmakers in that period preferred greater uses of symbolism and abstraction and dealt with themes of social alienation, psychology and sexual love. They loved to make a sudden climax and end the story, and they would leave an open ending to the audience to make them define it, continue it, or conclude it. Therefore, if Mrs. Mallard should live and tell her husband the truth, or she should live, keeping pretending she is fine like she did before. In my opinion, nothing is cleverer than the original one. If the author changed the end and kept writing the story, it would create an absurd anticlimax. It would ruin the whole story the author designs elaborately. Such French writing style could make readers taste again and again.If there would be anyone in Hollywood being considered for the role of Mrs. Louise Mallard. I think, based on Mrs. Mallard’s characteristics. Elizabeth Taylor in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and Vivien Leigh in “Gone with the Wind” could be considered for this dramatic queen. If so, that would be fabulous!