This story opens with a woman, Louise Mallard who has heart trouble, and who must be informed carefully about her husband’s death. Her sister tells her that her husband was killed in a railroad accident, and upon hearing this news she begins to sob and goes upstairs to be alone in her room. She sits down and looks out of the window to see trees, and people going about their business on the street. She is young, with lines around her eyes, which fill with tears as she gazes still into the distance. She attempts to suppress the building emotions within her, but she can’t and she begins repeating the word Free! to herself over and over again. Louise knows she’ll cry again when she sees Brently’s corpse. But then she imagines the years ahead without him, when she will be free, on her own without anyone to oppress her. Louise knows that she did love her husband but tells herself that none of that matters anymore. She is thrilled with her newfound sense of independence. Her sister comes to her door and begs Louise to come outside, to which Louise tells her to go away. She continues to imagine about all the days and years ahead and hopes that she lives a long life. Eventually she goes downstairs and the front door opens, to reveal her husband. He hadn’t been in the train accident or even aware that one had happened. Louise dies upon seeing him and when the doctors arrive, they pronounce that Louise died of a heart attack brought on by happiness.
This explores the story of a woman in domesticity - a woman who is trapped by her husband and defined only by her marital status. Throughout the story she is the subject of the masculine discourse of the story. This masculine discourse, which finally pronounces her dead, begins at the beginning of the story when she is introduced as “Mrs. Mallard” and referred to as “she” for most of the narrative. Only when Louise has become “free! Body and soul free!” is she addressed by her own name. But this change is short-lived as Louise’s status as “wife” is reestablished at once when her husband comes in “view of his wife.” Her marriage epitomises the status of women in the early 20th century in that the woman is subject to the patriarch’s “powerful will bending hers.” When Louise reflects on her new-found liberation she “abandon[s] herself” in a room of her own where she speaks for the first time. She must not make her “joy” public under any circumstances. She is extremely conscious of her social duty as a widow to grieve her husband and like many wives in late 19th century America, Louise would be master of herself only after her husband’s death. The room that Louise inhabits is also significant, because it is only a temporary refuge which she must leave as she always was going to. The self she is in her room does not have any value in the world of masculine discourse and therefore may as well have not existed. In fact, her existence depended on a lack of self, since a woman was meant to live for others. The woman is locked in the prison of her own home and is only free when she is dreaming about being out of wedlock. This explores the repressive role that marriage played in women’s lives in the era it was written.
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