Q 01/05

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

A) Grief

B) Joy

C) Terror

D) Shame

Answer · why

B) Joy

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 r...

Q 02/05

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

A) A runaway carriage

B) A riverboat explosion

C) A railroad disaster

D) A warehouse fire

Answer · why

C) A railroad disaster

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.

Q 03/05

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

A) Heart trouble

B) Weak lungs

C) Fainting fits

D) Nervous exhaustion

Answer · why

A) Heart trouble

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 fo...

Q 04/05

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

A) A locked door

B) A cracked mirror

C) A wedding portrait

D) An open window

Answer · why

D) An open window

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 th...

Q 05/05

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

A) Calixta

B) Josephine

C) Mariequita

D) Clarisse

Answer · why

B) Josephine

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.