40 Fun Facts About The Story of an Hour

In the last line of Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour', Mrs. Mallard is said to have died of which emotion?

Joy is the official verdict, on the assumption that a devoted wife was overcome at seeing her husband alive. Readers who sat with her in that locked room know it was closer to despair.

In Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour', what kind of accident is first reported to have killed Mr. Mallard?

A railroad disaster had a private echo for Kate Chopin: her own father was killed in a rail accident in 1855, when she was a small child.

Which ailment of Mrs. Mallard's, named as 'The Story of an Hour' begins, makes her family break bad news gently?

Heart trouble frames the whole story: it is named in the first sentence and returns in the final one, where it gives everyone a tidy medical reason for her collapse.

In 'The Story of an Hour', Mrs. Mallard's sense of a new future reaches her through which feature of her room?

An open window is what she sits facing, and through it come treetops, birdsong and a far-off singer; the narrator says she is drinking in an elixir through it.

Which sister of Mrs. Mallard gently breaks the news of the accident in Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour'?

Josephine delivers it in broken sentences and veiled hints, and later kneels at a keyhole begging to be let in before her sister makes herself ill.

Why does Mr. Mallard walk into his home unharmed at the end of Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour'?

He was far from the scene and, the narrator adds, did not even know there had been an accident, so the list that put his name first among the dead was simply wrong.

Which magazine, home to nineteen Kate Chopin stories in all, first published 'The Story of an Hour' in 1894?

Vogue was a well-paying market that took her most daring work; a later biographer credits it, alone among 1890s magazines, with printing truthful portrayals of women.

The last line of 'The Story of an Hour', which misreads Mrs. Mallard's death, is a classic example of which device?

Irony is the gap between what the characters conclude and what readers know: the official verdict on her death is the reverse of what the reader has just watched.

In 'The Story of an Hour', what is Mrs. Mallard's immediate reaction when told that her husband has been killed?

Wild weeping comes at once, which the narrator sets against the paralyzed disbelief of many women in her place; only when it is spent does she go to her room alone.

Critic Susan Cahill called Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour' one of the sacred texts of which movement?

Feminism claimed the story in the 1970s, when readers were first discovering Chopin; Cahill's remark dates from 1975, some eight decades after it was written.

What is Mrs. Mallard's first name, revealed in 'The Story of an Hour' only when her sister calls through a keyhole?

Louise is not named until late in the story; before that she is known only by her married title, which critics read as her own identity surfacing.

Which season is stirring the treetops in the square outside Mrs. Mallard's house in 'The Story of an Hour'?

Spring is the story's quiet argument: outside, everything is coming back into leaf at the very moment she starts to picture years that belong to her alone.

Which friend of Mr. Mallard is present when the bad news is broken to Mrs. Mallard in 'The Story of an Hour'?

Richards hears of the accident before anyone and hurries over so that no less careful, less tender friend can reach the house ahead of him with the message.

In 'The Story of an Hour', how does Mrs. Mallard recall that her husband's face had always looked upon her?

With love, she admits, and with kind, tender hands as well: the story never makes her husband a villain, which is what makes her relief at losing him so unsettling.

Where is Mrs. Mallard when someone unlocks the front door and her husband appears in 'The Story of an Hour'?

On the stairs is where it ends: she is coming down with an arm around her sister's waist when a latchkey turns in the front door.

Which 1899 Kate Chopin novel, condemned by reviewers in its day, shares the marriage themes of 'The Story of an Hour'?

The Awakening follows Edna Pontellier, another wife who wants an identity of her own; reviewers called it morbid and vulgar, and it was largely forgotten for half a century.

Kate Chopin, so closely tied to Louisiana in her fiction, was born and died in which city on the Mississippi?

St. Louis was home for all but about fourteen years: she left on marrying in 1870, came back a widow with six children in 1884, and wrote her fiction there.

What is the first name of Mr. Mallard, whose name leads the list of the dead in 'The Story of an Hour'?

Brently comes home travel-stained and composed, with no idea he has been reported dead or that his household has spent the past hour grieving him.

Alone in her room in 'The Story of an Hour', Mrs. Mallard keeps whispering that she is free in which two respects?

Body and soul are the two she names, after a first small word slips out three times under her breath; her sister, outside, fears she is making herself ill.

What does Mrs. Mallard breathe a quick prayer for in 'The Story of an Hour', having dreaded it only a day earlier?

A long life is suddenly something to pray for; only the day before, the narrator notes, she had shuddered at the very same thought.

Into which piece of furniture does the exhausted Mrs. Mallard sink once alone in her room in 'The Story of an Hour'?

An armchair, comfortable and roomy, is where she spends the middle of the story, motionless except for the odd sob, like a child who has cried itself to sleep.

Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour' was first printed in 1894 with which word in place of 'Story'?

Dream was the word in the first printing; a clipping kept in a museum archive shows it crossed out by hand and the familiar one written in.

What can Mrs. Mallard smell in the air outside her room, described as a delicious breath, in 'The Story of an Hour'?

Rain is on the air even as the clouds begin to break: critics note that the weather outside her room tracks her passage from grief to release.

What does a family friend try to do when Mr. Mallard walks in alive in 'The Story of an Hour'?

Screen him from sight is all he can attempt, a quick step between husband and wife, and the story answers in a single short line: he was too late.

Kate Chopin's father, Thomas, a successful businessman who died when she was a child, had emigrated from which country?

Ireland, specifically County Galway, was where he came from; her mother's side was French-speaking, so she grew up at home in two languages.

Where is Mr. Mallard's friend when word of the fatal accident first arrives in Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour'?

A newspaper office is where the list of the dead first comes in, which is how a family friend learns the news before the family does.

In 'The Story of an Hour', what does Mrs. Mallard suddenly recognize as the strongest impulse of her being?

Self-assertion, she decides, outweighs even the unsolved mystery of whether she cared for her husband, a thought bold enough that one magazine editor turned the story down.

Which Kate Chopin story about race in antebellum Louisiana was her best-known work for decades before the 1970s?

Désirée's Baby, first printed in 1893, was the one Chopin story that anthologies kept alive while the rest of her work fell out of print.

In 'The Story of an Hour', the lines of young Mrs. Mallard's face are said to show strength and which other quality?

Repression is the narrator's word, the only direct hint of what the marriage has cost her before the new feeling comes over her as she sits alone.

Leaving her room in 'The Story of an Hour', Mrs. Mallard carries herself, without knowing it, like which figure?

A goddess of Victory is the narrator's image, paired with a feverish triumph in her eyes, moments before the front door proves there was nothing to celebrate.

Which birds does Mrs. Mallard hear twittering in the eaves as she sits alone in 'The Story of an Hour'?

Sparrows, countless of them, belong to a deliberate soundscape; the narrator says the new feeling reaches her through the sounds, scents and color filling the air.

In 'The Story of an Hour', Mrs. Mallard decides that imposing a private will on a fellow creature is what?

A crime is her word for it whether the intention is kind or cruel, and she pointedly says that both men and women are guilty of it.

Which French author did Kate Chopin praise as a man who had escaped from tradition and authority?

Guy de Maupassant, she wrote, had looked out through his own eyes and told in a direct and simple way what he saw; reading his stories made her marvel.

In 'The Story of an Hour', what convinces Mr. Mallard's friend that the report of the death is true?

A second telegram is the only check he allows himself before rushing to the house, and the story's cruel joke is that two messages were still wrong.

What is Mr. Mallard calmly carrying when he lets himself into the house in 'The Story of an Hour'?

A grip-sack and umbrella make it the most ordinary of homecomings, and that is the point: the man everyone has mourned is merely back from a trip.

Kate Chopin's account books record what payment from a magazine for 'The Story of an Hour' in 1894?

$10 was the fee, worth a few hundred dollars now; she logged each sale in two account books, which also show the story under both of its titles.

Which 1894 Kate Chopin collection drew its first reviews just as she wrote 'The Story of an Hour'?

Bayou Folk gathered twenty-three of her stories and made her name nationally; one scholar argues that its success released the daring behind her tale of a widow's hour.

Which Kate Chopin story, written in 1898, stayed unpublished until 1969 because of its sexual frankness?

The Storm was never even sent to publishers, it seems; unknown until the collected edition appeared, it became famous almost overnight.

On what does Mrs. Mallard fix her dull stare from her seat in Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour'?

Patches of blue sky show between clouds piled in the west, and the narrator calls her gaze not reflection but a suspension of intelligent thought.

Who urged the widowed, grieving Kate Chopin to take up writing, years before 'The Story of an Hour'?

Her doctor, the obstetrician and family friend Frederick Kolbenheyer, thought writing would focus her energy and bring in an income as well.