I picked the short story “The Story of An Hour” by Kate Chopin (1894). The character I picked was Ms. Mallard being the narrator.

Knowing that I had a heart trouble everyone was very scared on how to tell me the news of my Husband’s death. They tried to break the news to me as Gently as possible.

My sister Josephine told me in broken sentence; my husband friend Richard was near me. It was him who was there in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with my husband name in the list of “killed”. Richard had only took time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

I didn’t accept the story as much other women would have, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. I wept once, with sudden, wild abandonment in Josephine arms. When the grief final hit me I went to my room to be alone. At this time I just wanted to be alone and didn’t want anyone to follow me.

I stood there facing the window, a comfortable, roomy arm chair. In this I broke down by a physical exhaustion that haunted my body and reached my soul.

I could see the open square before her house to tops of trees that all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which song which someone was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves,

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

I sat with head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, expect when a sob came up into my throat and me, as a child who cried herself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

Young I was with a fair people will describes me as, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. I now had a dull stare in my eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It wasn’t a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

There was something to me and I was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? I really didn’t know: it was way to subtle and elusive to name. But I felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching towards her through the sounds, the scents, and the color that filled the air.

Now I bosom rose and fell tumultuously. I started to realize this thing was approaching to possess me, but I was striving to beat it back , as powerless as my hands has been. While I abandon myself a little voice whispered word escaped my slightly parted lips. I said it over and over under my breath: Free Free Free! The fear that I had in my eyes where no longer there my eyes were keen and bright. My pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of my body.

I wonder if it was a monstrous joy that held me or not. A clear and exalted perception enabled me to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. I knew I would weep again when I saw the kind , tender hands folded in death: the face that had never looked safe with love upon me. Fixed and grey and dead. Being in the situation I was in I looked beyond the bitter sweet moment a long procession of years to come that would me. I opened and spread my arms out with welcome.

It hit me that I would have no one to live for in the years to come. It was time that I now have to   live for myself. There woul be nothing no longer in my way. No power to blending me in that blind persistence with men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon one another. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as I look upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

But yet I stilled love him. Often I had not. What did matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which I sudden recognized as the strongest impulse of my being.

I kept whispering Free! Body Free! Soul.

My sister put her lips near the keyhole wanting me to open the door and let her in. she shouts my name “Louise open the door” she begged me to open the door. She believed that I was going to make myself ill. She continue to trying and reach out to me with asking me what I’m doing? And to open the door.

I couldn’t take it no more, I told her go away. I’m not going to make myself ill. I was dinking in a elixir of life through the open window.

Thinking about what the future holds my fancy running riots along those days ahead. Thinking about spring and summer and the other season to come that I’m going to be on my own.

0

0