After learning of her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard is grief stricken and rejuvenated at the same time. The reader learns that Mrs. Mallard suffers from “heart trouble” and therefore “great care” is taken when telling her the news of her husband’s death (Chopin, 181). Mrs. Mallard’s sister and husband’s friend thought the news of her husband’s death would kill her unless it was told in a gentle manner. When she walks into her bedroom, there sits a large chair facing an open window. This small glimpse of the outside world stands as her only means of escape. She finds safety and comfort just by looking through the window. As Mrs. Mallard gazes out her window the scene matches her feelings. Spring was in the air and new life was blooming all around. The sight she viewed from her window portrayed new life, which she felt surging within her. The spring time birds were singing; the rain had revitalized the vegetation, much like her rain or tears had lead to her revitalization. There were many gray clouds which represented her grief, but there were patches of blue sky to which she was drawn. The blue sky symbolizes her new found life. This feeling was penetrating her soul “through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air” (182). It is like nature is calling to her to spread her wings and fly.
It is strange that as she realizes her new found freedom, she is “fearful” (182). All she has known is life with her husband, and so at first she is frightened. Then, she realizes that the remainder of her life is hers to do the things that she wants and dreams of doing. She is no longer required to fit into the perfect stay at home wife that she had been for her husband. She had loved her husband “sometimes” (182). She loved the man but did not love the constraints of the marriage. She did not understand how men and women could “impose a private will upon a fellow-creature” (182). It did not matter why it was still hurtful. It can cause a lot of stress on a person who is always trying to please another. There are many indications that Mrs. Mallard has changed from one who is repressed to one who is free.
Once she had realized she was “free, free, free,” her eyes changed from the “look of terror” to “keen and bright” (182). She was not afraid any more; instead she was reawakened by her freedom. “Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body” (182). Her heart trouble seems to have disappeared. She is healed by the “possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being” (182). Another indication that Mrs. Mallard has changed inside in out is the fact that until this point in the story she had been called Mrs. Mallard or wife and now she is given a name, Louise. This shows that she has found herself once more. As Louise chants, “Free! Body and soul free!” her sister thinks she is going over the deep end (182). Her sister thinks that Louise is going insane. Her sister probably thinks that Louise is referring to her late husband’s freedom in death. Louise was not thinking of her husband but of all the “days that would be her own” (183). She secretly prays that she will have a long life to enjoy her freedom.
As Louise emerges from her room, “there [is] a feverish triumph in her eyes” (183). She walks like “a goddess of Victory” down the stairs with her sister. It seems that she is even holding up her sister. “She clasped her sister’s waist” as they descended (183). Louise is a stronger person and she is determined to grasp her knew life and live it to the fullest. The end of the story is sad in the sense the woman is only aloud to have a few moments of freedom, for when she sees the sight of her husband in the door she is forced back into her box, which in the end kills her. Everyone thought the death of her husband would shock her into death; and they were careful to break the news to her, however did not act as carefully when they saw him in the doorway. Louise’s sister screamed and Richards made a “quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife” (183). They both failed. Louise was dead. In the end they thought it was the sight of her husband alive that killed her, when actually it was the life that she was granted for a brief moment and then was suddenly stripped away that stopped her heart.
The true meaning of the story is found in the truth about Louise’s “heart trouble”. Louise did not have a diseased heart caused by any sort of health problem. Louise suffered from the lack of meaning in her life which made her feel dead inside. The doctor said “she had died of heart disease-of joy that kills”, but actually it was the lack of joy and meaning that afflicted her heart. This message shouts do not lose your identity because you are part of a marriage or family. A marriage should not define who a person is; instead act as another layer to one’s personality. Every woman should fight to hold on to something that is her own and avoid death through domestication.
