Story of an Hour Flashcards
Initially powerless + fragile
“Afflicted with a heart trouble”
Euphemistic, foreshadowing
Cardiovascular or metaphorical forbeing emotional?
“Care was taken to break it to her” - euphemism “as gently as possible”
Hides agency, / passive verb construction
It does not tell us who and implies that everyone has to look after her
‘As gently…” - shows that this is not news that can be very gentle, implies her fragility and the care that others take around her
Lots of passive verb constructions -
“In broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing” - assonance and paradox
Then taken over by strong emotion - grief
NOT WITH “A paralyzed inability”, “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment”
She has an unexpected reaction to the news of the death
Not frozen, emotinoal
Foreshadows her later more abnormal reactions
Juxtaposition between her reaction and other peoples’
“Wild” implies instinct, juxtaposition between this dramatic reaction (emphasized by plosives) and the paralysis that may have been expected
“The storm of grief had spent itself”
Metaphorical “storm” → dramatic but temporary, reflexive “spent itself” -implies that the grief has agency, but she does not have control over her emotions
“Sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul”
Personification of the exhaustion and its extensive power to “haunt” and “reach into her soul” → somewhat metaphysical, affects her very strongly
“Sank” - physical representation of weight, symbolic, guilt / “heavy heart” - emotional burden / “pressed down” once again illustrates the weight
Unexpected, involuntary positive reaction
“Open window” “Open square”
“Open” → shows hope and possibility
“Aquiver with the new spring life”
Potential, pathetic fallacy. There is life here rather than death , “spring” - symbolises a fresh start - also inappropriate to be noticing these things when her husband has died?
“Aquiver” - sensitive, small motion, excitement
“The delicious breath of rain was in the air”
“Delicious” → synaesthesia
“Patches of blue sky” - symbolic of hope, joy , optimism
“Through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window”
Pathetic fallacy - there is hope
Past tense - all the bad things are now in the past. Sense of relief and optimism even though she doesn’t feel it yet
Symbolism of “Clouds” representing misery, “blue skies showing” through when he died - optimism, new hope, unexpected reaction/ sense of hope
“The sounds, the scents, the colour that filled the air” → asyndeton, anaphora, list of 3. Sensory imagery builds anticipation and a sense of possibility
Powerlessness to resist her feelings
“She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.”
“Her head thrown back upon” “quite motionless” - passive verb construction, separation of her head from the rest of herself = objectifies and makes her seem weak
“A sob came up into her throat” - she is the object, helpless and powerless, has no control over her feelings → involuntary reaction
“Shook her” - violent and aggressive, emphasizes the scale of her overwhelming reactions
“As a child” - sense of vulnerability and naivety
“Cried itself to sleep…continues to sob in its dreams” → unsettling image, dreams are usually associated with good things - magic, surrealism, hope for the future. “Sob” “Cried itself to sleep” - reflexive, loneliness in the world. Might be intentionally chosen to represent her loneliness now her husband is gone.
“Something” “she was waiting for it, fearfully”
Initially in denial and tries to resist feelings
“But she felt it, creeping out of the sky reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air”
“Tumultuously”
“Approaching to possess her”
“Striving to beat it back with her will”
Striving = trying but failing, also shows ambition (has connotations of)
Plosives of “beat” and “back”
“Monstrous joy that held her”
Metaphor - oxymoron, shows inner conflict, a positive thing is somehow monstrous / dangerous / predatory
“Held her” - she has a sense of powerlessness, cannot control it but she can feel it
“Free, free, free!”
Exclamation, tricolon
“Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering
“The face…Fixed and gray and dead”
Polysyndeton → emphasizes how not -alive he is
Depersonalisation, disassociation, focuses on the corpse, and the face of the corpse rather than the husband
“…beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely”
“And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome”
Metaphor “bitter”, and plosives
“Long procession of years” -metaphor → has connotations of a line of cars in a ceremony - can either be a funeral or a parade - shows divided emotions - grief over the future or hope?
Line 45: “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself.”
“Would be” → past tense conditional, foreshadowing,
“Noone to live for” seems negative / implies loneliness. Suddenly, after the semi colon, it becomes positive = statement of empowerment, life will now be positive and she can prioritise herself.
“There would be no powerful will bending hers”
Metaphor “bending” → turns “will(power)” into a tangible thing, easily malleable. Shows how she is weak and her husband is stronger / more dominant. She likes having freedom now
“A kind intention or a cruel intention”
Parallel syntax, epistrophe of “intention”, with juxtaposing adjectives “kind” or ”cruel” →
“And yet she had loved him — sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter!”
Reveals divided emotions and guilt about the relief she feels
Qualifies her love for him “sometimes” → shows lack of love
Comma before adverb sometimes - delay before the qualifier = hesitance, self correction
Contrast between “sometimes” and “often” → acceptance that she generally did not love him, cancels out the first part, will not miss him
“What did it matter!” exclamation, she does not love him and is attempting to justify it / mitigate it
“She was drinking in the very elixir of life through that open window”
Ironic that her husband’s death makes her feel more alive - questionable relationship / lack of love
“Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own.
Metaphor, her “fancy” → crazed, ecstatic, uncontrolled “running riot”, alliteration “r”r’ → jovial playful tone
Repetition of “days” → from “spring” to “summer” → all different types of seasons, shows the extensiveness of her freedom
“All” → determiner, every, whole → complete freedom
“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.”
Epistrophe “life might be long” → looking at juxtaposition between past and present “thought with a shudder” - visceral reaction, disgust / repulsion / fear
“Breathed” → like a whisper, fricatives “th” make it more subtle / quiet , also monosyllabic = hasty, desperate
“Feverish triumph” → oxymoron, shows her ecstasy and desperation and complete lack of control - frenetic excitement, frenzy
“Like a goddess of Victory” → classical allusion, link to “triumph”, also a supernatural deity → unconstrained to this physical realm = shows her gaining power and confidence (also worshipped)
At the end she is destroyed by ‘the joy that kills’
“Travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella”
“He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry” (the sister)
EXTENSIVE insight into her emotional response at his ‘death’, but when he returns, there is nothing - she dies instantly, all potential lost
Sudden and anticlimactic
Her life is over and we do not know how she feels, instead of freedom she loses everything
“Richard’s quick motion to screen him”
Ambiguous - is he protecting his wife or him?
“They said she had died of heart disease – of the joy that kills”
Dramatic irony, the readers know about her internal “monstrous joy” but other characters don’t
