What do you find shocking in "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin
Dear Student,
Mrs. Mallard had been married and spent her life with her husband for years. After long years of living together, the marital bond becomes strong, so when one partner dies, the other is plunged in grief. In some cases, the grief is so much that it becomes a mental wreck. In case of Mrs. Mallard, the opposite seems to have happened. She was so suffocated by the overbearing nature of her husband that she yearned vainly for deliverance from the marital bond. Her married life had been a story of broken dreams, oppression, and painful servitude. There was no way she could break free to lead the rest of her life in her own terms.
The train accident, and the wrong assumption that Mr. Mallard had succumbed to his injuries was itself an unexplained conjecture. The passing away of a person should drown his wife in grief, but Mrs. Mallard took it as a god-given opportunity to dream of an unfettered life without her husband breathing down her neck all the time. The reappearance of Mr. Mallard was an anti-climax.
The twist and turn of the story, along with the fact that no one knew the turmoil in Mrs. Mallard’s make the story shocking, but thoroughly engrossing.
Regards