FACULTAD DE FILOSOFÍA Y LETRAS

CARRERA: PROFESORADO DE INGLÉS

MATERIA: IDIOMA 3
PRESENTACIÓN POWER POINT
TÍTULO: Analysis of Story of an Hour-by Kate Chopin

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Analysis of Story of an Hour-by Kate Chopin
LANGUAGE III-2023 PROF. AMPARO ARGERICH PROF. SAMIAH HASSAN
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An outline for our class today

- STORY OF AN HOUR
- THE AUTHOR
- STEPS INTO READING WELL
- SOME READING COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS:

a- Characters
b- Socio-Historical Context
c- Personal context
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The Story of an Hour

- She was a controversial writer

- Her work was greatly criticised in her work period.
- She stood up for women’s rights.
- She had powerful, often surprising, endings.
- Her stories were a perfect representation of historical fiction and ‘local color’.
- Some argue that modern feminism was borne on her pages, and this might be clearly seen in her 1894 short story The Story of an Hour to
support the claim.

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Kate Chopin was a forgotten American voice until her literary reputation was resuscitated by critics in the 1950s. Today her novel The Awakening
(1899) the story of a sensual, determined woman who insists on her independence, is widely read and highly honored, a feminist work which was
decidedly ahead of its time. Born Katherine O'FIaherty into an upper-middle-class family in St. Louis, she married Oscar Chopin when she was
twenty and moved to her husband's home in Louisiana. In the ten years that she resided in Louisiana she was aware of and receptive to Creole,
Cajun, black, and Indian cultures, and when she later came to write fiction, she would incorporate people from these cultures in her work, especially
her short stories. She is considered a “local colorist”. When her husband died as a young man, Kate Chopin returned to St. Louis with her six
children. Financially secure, she began writing fiction as best she could while rearing her children. She is a good example of an American realist,
someone trying to represent life the way it actually is lived, and she acknowledged her debt to the contemporary French naturalists Emile Zola and
Guy de Maupassant.
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A note on The Awakening

The Awakening, novel by Kate Chopin, published in 1899, focuses on the struggle against societal expectations for women in their roles as wives
and mothers. Originally titled A Solitary Soul, the novella depicts a young mother’s struggle to achieve sexual and personal emancipation in the
oppressive environment of the postbellum American South. When it was first published, it was widely condemned for its portrayal of sexuality and
marital infidelity. It was banned and even fell out of print for many decades. Today it is considered a landmark work of early feminist fiction

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Our first steps into reading
The Story of an Hour
We will start making predictions.
- Have you read the story?
- What did you think as you read the title of the story?
- What might happen in an hour?
- Who might be involved?
Can we confirm or correct our initial predictions at this stage?
- What is the context of the story?
- Who are the characters involved?
- What do we learn about Louise Mallard as soon as we start reading?

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We go on reading...
- How did the characters learn of the accident?
- Why was Brently Mallard supposed to have died?
- How did Louise react to the news of her husband’s death?
- What was unusual about her reaction?
What do these ideas tell us about the context of situation?

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We go on reading and focus on a more local context.
- Can you visualise her room?
- How did she feel there?
- What season was it? What did she perceive about the ‘outer world’?
- How did her mood change?
- How did she imagine her future? How would she feel when she sees her husband at the funeral?
- Was she immersed in an unhappy marriage?

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We may focus on her expectations and near future now.

- What were her ideas of oppression?
- How did she feel at this special moment after visualising her last few days, weeks, years?
- What did she think of as ‘a monstrous joy’?
- What were her expectations for her future now?
- Why was her sister worried for her?
- How is Louise portrayed as she got out of her room and descends the stairs?
- What happened as she went downstairs?

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We reach the end...

“When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of joy that kills.”
- What did the doctors mean by this? What killed Louise?
- Do we agree? We have witnessed her process of liberation.
- How can we interpret “the joy that kills”? What really killed her?
- What is ironic about this phrase and the situation?
- What is the significance of the final sentence of the story?

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We go back to our predictions!

- What happened during this hour?
- Are your expectations and predictions fulfilled?
- What have we witnessed?

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- Now we’ll get ready for a second and even third reading of the story.
- Be prepared to work with vocabulary and a few quotations and sections from the text.
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Now we’ll get ready for a second and even third reading of the story.
- Once we have read and understood the main events in the story we are ready for better interpretation of the whole text and particular ideas!
- Can you identify different moments/ phases in Louise’s perceptions and emotions?
- Can you ‘label’ them? (example: an initial moment of grief)
- Where do we learn about her impressions of marriage, women’s role, women’s life in late XIXth century?
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Work on some sentences and passages
- Identify 5 sentences that are interesting and worth commenting on. Explain the meaning of the sentences comment each of them.
- You may identify sentences with special meaning:

- A. those that highlight these phases she’s going through (grief, despair, numbness, paralysis, exaltation, joy and freedom)
- B. those that show her conflict with her husband, the news of his death (love and oppression?)
- C. those that show her conflict with social impositions.
- We have chosen a few. Can you explain what they mean?

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Some more…
What do these passages mean in the context of the story?
- “She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her.”
- “There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a
private will upon a fellow-creature.”
- “A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.”
- “And yet she had loved him--sometimes.”
- “She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long.”
- “It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.”
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- Identify 5 sentences that are interesting and worth commenting on. Explain the meaning of the sentences comment each of them.
- What is your impression or evaluation of the events that have taken place?

• Why can we say that the ending is ironic? What do we know? What do the doctors know?
• How would you comment on the use of irony and symbolism in the story?
• What is ironic about the whole story? Or... where in the story do you find the use of irony?

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Sources

- https://americanliterature.com/author/kate-chopin/short-story/the-story-of-an-hour
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Awakening-novel-by-Chopin#ref1272742