Read the passage. Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death. Why does Kate Chopin include the detail about Mrs. Mallard’s heart condition in “The Story of an Hour”?\
Answers
In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, Kate Chopin describe Mrs. Mallard as "Young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength." The lines on the face of Mrs. Mallard is described to indicate that she keeps many things inside her repressed. Mrs. Mallard doesn't give her feelings a free reign. Also, suffering from medical conditions, she puts her life to threat. We learn that she due to her marriage sufferings and is not optimistic about her married life. We learn this when she wishes for her life to be short, a night before the death of her husband. as an option to marriage, she would welcome her death gladly.
When Josephine inform Mrs. Mallard about the death of her husband we tend to observe her first reaction where she weeps into her sister’s arm and was hard to take. “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms.” In such grief she rushes off to her room to be alone, later it is observed that “But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.” And the reader sees something coming to her and speaks softly “free, free, free!.” This situation can be dramatic as only the reader knows the real feeling of Mrs. Mallard. On the other hand, other characters are not aware of her real feelings. She celebrates it and by the end, she is dead with a heartbreak, wherein, her husband receives the news of Louise's death.