Answer to Question #167821 in English for michael

Question

Recall that dramatic irony is a form of irony that exists when the reader is aware of something that a character does not know. Explain how the revelation that Mrs. Mallard has a heart condition at the beginning of the story lends itself to the dramatic irony of the story’s conclusion. What does the ending reveal about the author’s point of view of marriage and the status of women at the time?

Answer 1

In The Story of an Hour, it is revealed at the beginning of the story that Mrs. Mallard has a heart trouble and thus cannot hold neither extreme joy nor pain. When she receives the news of her husband’s death, she undergoes an emotional outburst. This is a situation of dramatic irony because Mrs. Mallard’s sister, Josephine, is under the impression that her sister is grief-stricken while in fact she is celebrating her newfound freedom and liberation from her marriage. There is also dramatic irony in the end when Mrs. Mallard dies from heart attack after seeing her husband walk through the front door alive. The characters in the story and doctors later believed she died from excitement after seeing Mr. Mallard alive while in essence she died from disappointment since her hopes of a new beginning had been truncated.

Mrs. Mallard’s pain and death in the story’s ending reveal the captive role wives played in the society in the Victorian Era. Women were bound by their roles and no woman could think of acting otherwise. Mrs. Mallard dies from her joy of new life being cut short but no one in the story gets to know the real secret behind her pain. Women at the time suffered from both physical and emotional confinement and suffocation in their lives. The joy and freedom in a woman’s life was also short-lived.