Realism Assignment 1: A Story of an Hour

In the story Mrs. Mallards actions on the surface would appear very similiar to any other wife who's husband has died. However in the details it is shown that she is actually relieved that her husband is dead, not from malice against him but relief that her life would now "be her own". Chopin writes that "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance." and then "She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body."

The story displays that although grieving she was also joyed by her husband's death, as she would now no longer be under his will, Chopin writing "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." This is realism because it is a somewhat unpleasant truth that she would feel this way about her husband's death, and is illustrating a feminist by showing the extreme extent to which she felt inhibited and restricted by her marriage.