No name Mrs. Mallard
Upon reading "The Story of an Hour" for the first time, (with absolutely no context), I expected it to be a rather typical story of grief and loss. That being my mind set from the beginning, it was easy to ignore the fact that the classic stages of grief were no where in sight throughout this short story. I did notice immediately that while Chopin chose to name of all the secondary characters of this story, she opted to leave Mrs. Mallard's first name out. While I didn't know why until the very end, I believe this is a hugely telling choice made by Chopin to bolster the idea that Mrs. Mallard had never found her voice throughout her life. She never felt true freedom until moments after learning of her husbands passing. And while my knee jerk reaction was to think of how cold Mrs. Mallard was being, after rereading "The Story of an Hour" I began to identify with her, and almost celebrate her husbands death right alongside her....