刊物属性
  • 刊物名称:校园英语
  • 国内刊号:CN 13-1298/G4
  • 国际刊号:ISSN 1009-6426
  • 邮发代号: 18-116
  • 数据库收录:中国知网
  • 投稿邮箱:
      bianji@xiaoyuanyingyu.com
  • 作者:校园英语杂志社 字数:2706 点击:

    作者:李瑶
      The Story of an Hour is one of the most famous short stories of Kate Chopin. The protagonist, Louise, is a woman who tried to free herself from the limited space and found herself in one hour. The rooms are the most important symbols in The Story of an Hour. With the shift of space between room and living room, the identity of protagonist changed from Mrs. Mallard to Louise. She closed herself in the room where caused her great emotional changes, feeling the inner power from freedom. At first, through the window in this room, Mrs. Mallard behold the most ordinary scenes like the new spring life in lively square and the blue sky with clouds, which hint her aspiration for outside world. The glimpse of the outside scenes also reflects her aspiration for freedom, and then suddenly there was a kind of epiphany coming to her mind. When she realized she had already got rid of the bondage of the marriage, her individual consciousness was awakened. In this room, she felt that her “id” was awakening. She didn’t belong to anyone but herself. It is the room that provides her the possibility to be herself, rather than to play like a wife with extreme sadness. Therefore, I believe the room symbolizes a peaceful and free world she is yearning for. Also, the room is the spiritual shelter for her to avoid the grim reality.
      When she walked out of the room, she looks like a goddess of Victory. But at the moment she saw her husband, she realized her husband would get her stuck in the shackle of marriage again. Therefore, there is a conflict between the inside room and outside living room. The writer deliberately arranged all the characters come cross in the living room. Also, the living room witnesses this story’s beginning, climax, conflicts and ending together. This is not a coincidence. If the inside room represents the world she is yearning for,, the living room means another fierce world she has to face. At the beginning, when she was in the living room, we could see her deep grief at her husband’s death. This is because crying for her husband’s death is the social custom she has to observe. But when she saw her husband again, she changed from the goddess of victory to a woman who lost her life forever. Here, the facts illustrated that the outside living room means the secular society where she had been. In that patriarchal society, all her aspiration for freedom and her free wills were smashed by the social custom, more specifically, the marriage. When the conflicts in these two worlds came to the extreme point, she can’t stand the pressure, then died.