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Transcript of Lit
A Close Reading of Edith L. Tiempo's "Bonsai"
Bonsai
All that I love
I fold over once
And once again
And keep in a box
Or a slit in a hollow post
Or in my shoe.
All that I love?
Why, yes, but for the moment ---
And for all time, both.
Something that folds and keeps easy,
Son’s note or Dad’s one gaudy tie,
A roto picture of a young queen,
A blue Indian shawl, even
A money bill.
It’s utter sublimation
A feat, this heart’s control
Moment to moment
To scale all love down
To a cupped hand’s size,
Till seashells are broken pieces
From God’s own bright teeth.
And life and love are real
Things you can run and
Breathless hand over
To the merest child.
- Edith L. Tiempo
* * *
A first reading of Edith L. Tiempo’s signature poem is a tad confounding, for
the first lady of Philippine poetry in English deploys the centripetal-
centrifugal-centripetal (or inward-outward-inward) motion in expressing her
profoundest thoughts and deepest feelings about love. The title itself,
“Bonsai,” is a bit misleading, since nowhere else in the poem are there any
further references to plant life or the ancient Japanese technique of
cultivating miniature trees or shrubs through dwarfing by selective pruning.
Some might even argue that “Origami” is the better title choice, for at least
the persona’s act of folding objects is a bit analogous to the Japanese art of
paper folding to make complicated shapes. But this reader will prove at the
end of this essay that “Bonsai” is the most appropriate title for the poem,
something that is not quite obvious to most people after their perfunctory
appraisal of this often misread literary masterpiece.
However, despite the false lead, even a cursory perusal of the poem reveals
to the sensitive and sensible reader that “Bonsai” is about love, if only
because the four-letter word is mentioned in all four stanzas. In the first
stanza, the persona declares that she folds everything that she loves and
keeps them hidden in secret places: “a box,/ Or a slit in a hollow post,/ Or in
my shoe.//” What then are the things she considers imperative enough to
keep?
At first glance, the catalogue of her beloved objects in the second stanza
appears to be disparate, unrelated, almost random, if not completely
aleatory. But since a literary sorceress like Tiempo seldom commits mistakes
in conjuring appropriate images, then there must a be reason for singling out
these particular items and not others. The more important query therefore is
this: What do “Son’s note or Dad’s one gaudy tie,/ A roto[i] picture of a
young queen,/ A blue Indian shawl, even/ A money bill.//” share in common?
Besides being foldable and thus easy to keep, they must symbolize for the
loving female persona important individuals and incidents in her life. For as
the semiotician Roland Barthes correctly observes in A Lover’s Discourse:
“Every object touched by the loved being’s body becomes part of that body,
and the subject eagerly attaches himself to it.”[ii]
If we are to assume that the speaking voice of “Bonsai” closely resembles
the poet’s own, then the first three objects must represent members of her
immediate family: son Maldon; husband Edilberto (It is a well-known fact
among writing fellows and panelists of the Silliman Writers’ Workshop that
Edith fondly called the late fictionist and literary critic “Dad,” while being
addressed by her husband as “Mom,” which is a common practice among
Filipino couples.); and daughter Rowena (Unknown to many, the current
Program Administrator of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop is a former winner of
the Miss Negros Oriental beauty contest sometime in the 1970s, another
indicator of the Filipino flavor of the poem, since the Philippines is a pageant-
obsessed Third World country.).
The referents of the last two items are more covert and thereby more
difficult to decipher. At best, we can only speculate on the persons and/or
events that make the two things significant: blue Indian shawl (Edith’s
engagement date with Edilberto, her first winter in Iowa, her last autumn in
Denver?); money bill (Her initial salary from Silliman University, cash prize
from the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature?).
In the long run though the indeterminacy of the allusions does not really
matter, for the opaqueness of the symbols leads not to generic obscurity and
obfuscation, but to personal mythology and mystery. Perhaps part of the
poem’s message is that the things a person considers memorable and
therefore valuable most other people might think of as debris, detritus or
dirt. (Note that the adverb “even” modifying “money bill” is used to indicate
something unexpected or unusual, which in the context of the poem seems
to suggest that a money bill is not a conventional object to collect and
treasure even by the most sentimental of persons.) Suffice it to say that all
five objects, which are outwardly ordinary and nondescript, acquire
associative significations because they serve for the poetic persona as
conduits of recall, like mementoes, souvenirs and keepsakes.
Interestingly, the second stanza commences with what appears to be a
rhetorical question (“All that I love?”), which the persona answers with a
paradox: “Why, yes, but for the moment ---/ And for all time, both.” The
significance of these seemingly self- contradictory lines will be discussed
towards the end of this essay, but for now this reader will focus on the fact
that the persona pauses to contemplate on the germane issue of the scope
of her love, before she proceeds to enumerate her loved ones’ memorabilia
that she has decided to vouchsafe. Love for the female persona therefore is
a conscious choice, a cognitive act not only an affective one, a motif that
recurs in various degrees in most of her other love poems.
In the third stanza, the persona explains the rationale behind her action:
It’s utter sublimation
A feat, this heart’s control
Moment to moment
To scale all love down
To a cupped hand’s size,
The keyword here is sublimation, which in psychology is the deflection of
sexual energy or other atavistic biological impulse from its immediate goal to
one of a higher social, moral or aesthetic nature or use. In chemistry, on the
other hand, sublimation is the process of transforming a solid substance by
heat into a vapor, which on cooling condenses again to solid form without
apparent liquefaction. Inherent in both definitions is the act of refinement
and purification through fire, since to sublimate in a sense is to make
something sublime out of something sordid. In the latter a literal fire
dissolves through a crucible the dross from the precious metal, while in the
former it is furnace of the mind that burns away the superfluous from the
crucial experiences.
The second most important idea in this stanza is the procedure of scaling
love down, which Tiempo asserts is a feat by itself, an exceptional
accomplishment of the female persona’s sentimental heart which is achieved
through utmost discipline and restraint. But aside from mere manageability,
why is it necessary to miniaturize love, to whittle it down to the size of “a
cupped hand”?
The answer to this pertinent question is given, albeit in a tangential fashion,
in the fourth and last stanza: “And life and love are real/ Things you can run
and/ Breathless hand over/ To the merest child.” Love as “real things” or
concrete objects rather than as abstract concepts is easier to pass on, since
it has become more tangible and thus more comprehensible to most
everyone else, including children and one’s beloved offspring. It also
underscores the importance of bequeathing the legacy of love to the next
generation, since as the cliché goes “children are the future of the world,”
which makes “the merest child,” and not the wisest woman nor the strongest
man, the ideal recipient of such a wonderful gift. The image of the cupped
hand also emphasizes the idea that in the act of giving the one offering the
bequest is also a beggar of sorts, since the beneficiary can always refuse to
accept the heirlooms being proffered.
But another important element is introduced in the ultimate stanza, for the
persona by some extraordinary leap of the imagination perceives the
seashells on the beach as “broken pieces/ From God’s own bright teeth,”
which for a better understanding of “Bonsai” must be elaborated on, so that
readers of Philippine poetry from English can fully appreciate the tight
structural organization of the poem. Gémino H. Abad in his remarkable essay
“Mapping Our Poetic Terrain: Filipino Poetry in English from 1905 to the
Present”[iii]connects this image to the paradoxical lines of the second stanza
“for the moment ---/ And for all time, both.” This reader cannot help but
agree, since indeed the five objects mentioned by the persona being
mementoes of the people she loves are metonyms of memory, shattered but
shimmering fragments of chronology, captured important moments
immortalized in the heart and mind, if we are to visualize Time itself as a
manifestation of God.
Of greater consequence, thought, is that this divine figure completes
Tiempo’s poetic picture about love and remembrance by adding the spiritual
detail, for love like the unmentionable Hebrew name of the Almighty is also a
Tetragrammaton, a four-letter word, which has probably engendered the
often-quoted adage that “God is Love, and Love is God.” Structurally
speaking, her most famous poem can thus be diagrammed in this manner:
TREE/SHRUB ------- bonsai
LOVE ------------- son’s note, Dad's one gaudy tie, etc.
GOD -------------- seashells
MAN/WOMAN -------- merest child
On the left side of the chart are the huge objects, concepts or people: full-
size flora (Tree/Shrub), big abstract words (Love, God) and grownups
(Man/Woman). Their miniature analogues, in contrast, are found on the right
side of the chart. However, these diminutive parallels, especially the
mementoes, retain the spirit of their larger versions, since the process of
sublimation reduces things only in terms of size but not in essence.
Ultimately, this makes “Bonsai” the perfect title of the poem, for a bonsai
has all the necessary parts that make a tree or a shrub what it is: roots, a
trunk, branches, leaves and flowers, albeit in smaller portions; in the same
manner that love even if sublimated by the heart and the mind still
preserves its sum and substance, its lifeblood in the truest sense of the
written word and the word made flesh.
Notes:
[i] Short for rotogravure: a photomechanical process by which pictures,
typeset matter, etc., are printed from an intaglio copper cylinder to the
pages of a newspaper, usually the magazine section.
[ii] Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, Hill and Wong, New
York, 1978, p. 173.
[iii] See Gémino H. Abad's introductory essay in The Likhaan Anthology of
Philippine Literature in English, University of the Philippines Press, Quezon
City, 1998.
An Analysis of Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
I discussed the poem Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe with my seventh grade classes, and we had lively
discussions about it. The conventional–and typical–interpretation of this poem is that it is a love poem
inspired by Poe’s dead wife. My interpretation is different, however. I’ve tried to find another
interpretation like mine, and failing, have decided to explain what I think.
Firstly, I want to point out that I am not going to write this as a research paper. I will have no sources
other than the poem itself and my own thoughts. Additionally, I begin with the knowledge that Poe
composed the poem after his wife’s death. Any specifics about his or her age, cause of death, etcetera,
will not come into this explanation because I do not believe them relevant.
One of the most challenging features of Annabel Lee is something that I’ve intuited but never felt the
need to articulate, namely:
A fiction writer is understood to take up the role of a narrator, which may differ from his or her own
perspective. A poet, on the other hand, is presumed to simply be revealing his or her own biographical
feelings in the poem. In short, a poem like Annabel Lee is doubly challenging because it contains both a
fictional narrative and a fictional narrator.
Since Annabel Lee is in the public domain, I can begin with the text of the poem itself. Note that Poe
actually indents the even lines of his poem, but WordPress enjoys stripping any spaces from the code, and
I’m not willing to try to spend hours trying to figure out how to force it to add three extra spaces to every
other line of this poem.
Annabel Lee
By Edgar Allan Poe
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
I want to take an alternate viewpoint of this poem and examine it from the premise that Poe was using an
unreliable narrator. From this point on, when I refer to the poet, I will be referring to the fictional
character who is recounting the events of the poem, not Edgar Allan Poe. I will refer to Poe by name
when I mean Poe the craftsman who created this poem.
If the poet is unreliable, deciphering which pieces of the poem are factual, and which pieces are
interpretations based on the poet’s flawed perspective is a balancing act. The unreliable narrator has a
distorted perception of reality, and through that distortion, the reader must interpret what is real and what
the poet believes.
The poem Annabel Lee gradually reveals stanza by stanza that the poet is not sane. Within each stanza the
poet explains more of his distorted reality, allowing the reader to decipher that the madness was present
all along. At the poem’s conclusion, the reader can look back over the poem to see that all of the
unreliable hints left by the mad poet.
S T A N Z A O N E
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
The poet begins the poem with “It was many and many a year ago,” which is a close approximation of
“Once upon a time,” or even, “A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away…” This prepares the reader
for Never Never Land, a comparable fairy tale landscape, or the green, green grass of the past.
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
He describes Annabel Lee as a “maiden,” which is, by definition, a young girl, especially unmarried, or a
virgin. That he does call her a maiden indicates that their relationship had not progressed to marriage, or
he would likely have introduced her as his “wife.”
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
The poet also explains that the maiden, “lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me.”
Since it is the poet who makes this declaration (and not the maiden; we don’t discover until Stanza Three
why the maiden can’t speak for herself), there are two conclusions we can draw from his statement:
The maiden really did live “with no other thought that to love and be loved by” the poet;
The maiden did not have these thoughts, but the poet believed that she did.
Stanza One is the beginning of the poem, and the reader has not had enough exposure to the poet to
evaluate his reliability. Readers who assume that the poet is recounting his own true feelings or
experiences in the poem will not doubt that the poet is honestly portraying the state of affairs. In contrast,
readers who begin to question the reliability of the poet after reading the remainder of the poem must
question the accuracy of his assertions.
S T A N Z A T W O
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
The couplets introduce these concepts:
1. The poet and Annabel Lee were children in this once upon a time place;
2. the poet and Annabel Lee “loved with a love that was more than love”;
3. this love was so amazingly great that the angels in heaven were jealous of the lovers.
Most people read that the poet and Annabel Lee “loved with a love that was more than love” and assume
simply that this line is hyperbole, or an exaggeration of the love the two shared. They do not even
question the poet’s assertion, seemingly taking it for granted that a thing (or concept) can be greater than
the thing (or concept) itself. But something by definition cannotbe greater than itself. The formula 1 > 1
results in a logical error.
Add to this the very abstract and ultimately unknowable statement uttered in lines 11-12, when the poet
declares that the angels of heaven are jealous of the love shared between Annabel Lee and the narrator.
Such an assertion can be interpreted as either fact or opinion, as in:
The poet has knowledge of the heavens that gives him access to the motivations of divine beings.
The poet’s opinion is that the angels of heaven were jealous of the love shared by the lovers.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and point out that my experience in life has left me slightly ignorant of
the sublime. Indeed, most people I know (and even the most religious among them) are equally ignorant
of the sublime. Therefore, the first point can be discounted.
This leaves us with the interpretation that the poet was expressing an opinion when he declared that the
angels were jealous. Since people vary in the way they deal with grief, it is not unlikely to assume that the
poet has decided to pin the blame for his love’s loss on the divine instruments, God’s angels. What has
driven the poet to angels is unclear, especially since he may as well go all the way to the big guy. After
all, God is the one who directs the angels much like a toddler with his toy cars. Indeed, by focusing his
attention on the angels, he’s giving God a pass, and this purposeful omission appears to be the poet’s way
to blame God without blaming God.
S T A N Z A T H R E E
Within this stanza the poet adds two pieces of information to his tale. First, he reinforces the angels’
culpability by saying, “This is the reason” though he doesn’t yet acknowledge the angels as divine
hitmen:
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
Second, the “highborn kinsmen” of Annabel Lee take her away and shut her up in a sepulchre by the sea:
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
Probably the most telling element of this stanza is that the poet reveals through his explanation that he is
not in any way responsible for Annabel Lee’s body. Her kinsmen are. This supports his earlier statement
of Annabel Lee as a maiden. She is a minor, then, a dependent whose elders take care of her after her
death. Keep in mind that his reliability is questionable, so the behavior of others in this case supports the
statement that she was a maiden, and we can accept it now more readily.
S T A N Z A F O U R
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
The poet’s accusation that the angels are divine hitman incapable of accepting such pure love on earth is a
restatement of his assertion from Stanza Three; however, in Stanza four he goes further by attempting to
legitimize this accusation when he explains that since everyone knows it, it must be so. I’ve already
explained my doubts about the poet’s access to sublime knowledge; I’m equally suspicious about his
access to the knowledge of his fellow men, which means his “as all men know” argument is equally
faulty. I interpret this as self-deception: he has convinced himself that angels killed Annabel Lee and tells
himself that “all men know” this to be the case. We don’t have “all men” to substantiate the poet’s
declaration; instead, we have the poet who is increasingly unreliable.
The cause of Annabel Lee’s death, according to the poet, is that “the wind came out of the cloud by night,
/ Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.” What makes this line interesting is that it could be the most
truthful line in the entire poem. Annabel Lee could have died from exposure to cold air; she could have
developed pneumonia; there are probably many possible methods of dying from exposure. What is telling
about the poet is that he then takes this cold air killer and connects it with the divine, identifying it as the
will of angels who seek to end Annabel’s life.
S T A N Z A F I V E
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
The poet reveals his strong love, far stronger than the love experienced by others, which is why it can’t be
split by either angels or demons.
It is a misapprehension of either innocence or madness to assume that what you yourself experience
differs from every other person who has ever existed. It’s the perennial teenage argument, “You just don’t
understand,” when the reality is that it is the teenager who just doesn’t understand, who speaks from
ignorance and assumes everyone else is not equally ignorant, but more ignorant.
One part of aging is to get past the egocentric assumption that the rest of the world cannot connect to your
experiences. The poet has never passed to true maturity, since the loss of Annabel Lee has left him
emotionally crippled at the same level of emotional maturity as he was when he lost her. After all, the
poet introduces the poem with the line, “It was many and many a year ago.” Meanwhile, he remains (all
these years later) as certain as ever that no one can appreciate his lost love, that no one can understand,
because no one has ever experienced such a loss.
S T A N Z A S I X
The final stanza of Annabel Lee is a knock-out. But Poe doesn’t just put it in one solid jab; he throws a
rapid right-left combo before the main thrust. Observe:
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
We accept this as believable. Certainly a lost love will visit her lover’s dreams as he mourns her death.
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
The creep factor should have set in with the words, “I feel the bright eyes.” I recognize only two possible
interpretations for this line:
The poet is reaching out with his own fingertips to “feel the bright eyes / Of the beautiful Annabel
Lee”; or
The poet can “feel” the admittedly dead Annabel Lee looking at him. This is the more likely of the
two, since it indicates that the poet feels a connection to the dead Annabel Lee as she observes him
despite the gulf between the two.
Here’s the final punch:
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
The poet reveals that he spends his nights within his dead love’s tomb at the side of her body. Poe waits,
has the poet hold off on this admission until the conclusion of the poem because he wants his reader to
look back over the rest of the poem and see it anew, see it in the light of a narrator willing to lay inside a
sepulchre beside a dead body near the ocean. All previous stanzas are skewed after the poet admits he
sleeps beside Annabel Lee even after her death.
I N C O N C L U S I O N
I believe Poe was really trying to create a disturbing poem that reveals gradually that the poet was
unreliable and obsessed with a woman who may not have returned his love. The basic unreliability of the
poet revealed in hints throughout the poem means that even as the poet claims Annabel Lee is his “bride,”
a reader may not be able to believe that she was anything more than an obsession. We’ve all heard stories
of Hollywood starlets beset by obsessive stalkers who need restraining orders; these maniacal lovers fill
notebooks with fantasies, and live with the belief that the two are meant to be together for all time. I think
Poe wanted to capture this monomania when he wrote Annabel Lee, portraying a creepy stalker willing to
sneak into his dead love’s crypt because of his certainty that she wants to be with him even in death.
"The Story of An Hour"
Kate Chopin (1894)
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.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints
that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there,
too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when
intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's
name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure
himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any
less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a
paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden,
wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent
itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into
this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body
and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that
were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in
the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a
distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless
sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds
that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite
motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a
child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and
even a certain strength. 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.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully.
What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But
she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds,
the scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize
this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat
it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would
have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her
slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under hte breath: "free, free,
free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from
her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the
coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A
clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.
She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands
folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her,
fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long
procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she
opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live
for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind
persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose
a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention
made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief
moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it
matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this
possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest
impulse of her being!
"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold,
imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you
will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open
the door."
"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of
life through that open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and
summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a
quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought
with a shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There
was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a
goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they
descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard
who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and
umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even
know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at
Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy
that kills.
THE STORY OF AN HOURKate Chopin
Context
Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1850, one of five children but
the only one to live through her twenties. Her father, Thomas O’Flaherty,
died when she was five, and she spent her childhood among women: her
mother, Eliza; grandmother; great-grandmother; and the nuns who ran her
school. In 1870, Chopin married Oscar Chopin and moved with him to New
Orleans, where they had six children.
Chopin was an independent spirit who smoked cigarettes, walked alone
through the city, and argued passionately with others about politics and
social problems, much to the dismay of the other New Orleans housewives in
her social circle. Not long after the family moved to Cloutierville, Louisiana,
Oscar died unexpectedly. Chopin mourned his death deeply but eventually
embraced her independence, even going so far as to having an affair with a
married man. Chopin soon returned to St. Louis, where she would spend the
rest of her life.
Chopin began writing fiction in 1889. She wrote about life and people in
Louisiana and focused her attention on love, sex, marriage, women, and
independence. She published her first novel, At Fault, in 1890, when she was
forty. The novel was well received, and she went on to publish short stories
and essays addressing similar topics. She published two collections of short
stories, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Arcadie (1897), and became known
as a writer with a keen eye for local culture. “The Story of an Hour” was
published in 1894 and, along with “The Storm” (1898), is among Chopin’s
most famous stories. Although Chopin’s female protagonists act in
unconventional, even scandalous, ways, readers accepted this as simply part
of the storytelling and didn’t suspect Chopin of moralizing or trying to insert
her personal opinions into her work.
In 1899, Chopin published her second novel, The Awakening. The novel,
which chronicles a married woman’s adulterous affair, shocked readers.
Chopin had allowed her support of women’s independence and sexual
freedom to shine through, which proved to be unacceptable. The publication
of this novel marked the beginning of the end of Chopin’s writing career, and
the novel soon fell out of print, remaining undiscovered until the 1950s.
Today, Chopin is known for addressing feminist issues many years before the
feminist movement became a major social and political force in America.
When Chopin was writing, the feminist movement had barely begun, and in
Louisiana, women were still considered to be their husbands’ lawful property.
As a result, Chopin’s brazen, sensual, independent protagonists were years
ahead of their time. “The Story of an Hour” reflects Chopin’s view of the
repressive role that marriage played in women’s lives as the protagonist,
Louise Mallard, feels immense freedom only when her husband has died.
While he is alive, she must live for him, and only when he dies does her life
once again become her own.
Chopin died of a brain hemorrhage in 1904. She was fifty-two.
Plot Overview
Louise Mallard has heart trouble, so she must be informed carefully about
her husband’s death. Her sister, Josephine, tells her the news. Louise’s
husband’s friend, Richards, learned about a railroad disaster when he was in
the newspaper office and saw Louise’s husband, Brently, on the list of those
killed. Louise begins sobbing when Josephine tells her of Brently’s death and
goes upstairs to be alone in her room.
Louise sits down and looks out an open window. She sees trees, smells
approaching rain, and hears a peddler yelling out what he’s selling. She
hears someone singing as well as the sounds of sparrows, and there are
fluffy white clouds in the sky. She is young, with lines around her eyes. Still
crying, she gazes into the distance. She feels apprehensive and tries to
suppress the building emotions within her, but can’t. She begins repeating
the word Free! to herself over and over again. Her heart beats quickly, and
she feels very warm.
Louise knows she’ll cry again when she sees Brently’s corpse. His hands
were tender, and he always looked at her lovingly. But then she imagines the
years ahead, which belong only to her now, and spreads her arms out
joyfully with anticipation. She will be free, on her own without anyone to
oppress her. She thinks that all women and men oppress one another even if
they do it out of kindness. Louise knows that she often felt love for Brently
but tells herself that none of that matters anymore. She feels ecstatic with
her newfound sense of independence.
Josephine comes to her door, begging Louise to come out, warning her that
she’ll get sick if she doesn’t. Louise tells her to go away. She fantasizes
about all the days and years ahead and hopes that she lives a long life. Then
she opens the door, and she and Josephine start walking down the stairs,
where Richards is waiting.
The front door unexpectedly opens, and Brently comes in. He hadn’t been in
the train accident or even aware that one had happened. Josephine screams,
and Richards tries unsuccessfully to block Louise from seeing him. Doctors
arrive and pronounce that Louise died of a heart attack brought on by
happiness.
Character List
Louise Mallard - A woman whose husband is reportedly killed in a train
accident. When Louise hears the news, she is secretly happy because she is
now free. She is filled with a new lust for life, and although she usually loved
her husband, she cherishes her newfound independence even more. She has
a heart attack when her husband, alive after all, comes home.
Brently Mallard - Louise’s husband, supposedly killed in a train accident.
Although Louise remembers Brently as a kind and loving man, merely being
married to him also made him an oppressive factor in her life. Brently arrives
home unaware that there had been a train accident.
Josephine - Louise’s sister. Josephine informs Louise about Brently’s death.
Richards - Brently’s friend. Richards learns about the train accident and
Brently’s death at the newspaper office, and he is there when Josephine tells
the news to Louise.
Analysis of Major Characters
Louise Mallard
An intelligent, independent woman, Louise Mallard understands the “right”
way for women to behave, but her internal thoughts and feelings are
anything but correct. When her sister announces that Brently has died,
Louise cries dramatically rather than feeling numb, as she knows many other
women would. Her violent reaction immediately shows that she is an
emotional, demonstrative woman. She knows that she should grieve for
Brently and fear for her own future, but instead she feels elation at her
newfound independence. Louise is not cruel and knows that she’ll cry over
Brently’s dead body when the time comes. But when she is out of others’
sight, her private thoughts are of her own life and the opportunities that
await her, which she feels have just brightened considerably.
Louise suffers from a heart problem, which indicates the extent to which she
feels that marriage has oppressed her. The vague label Chopin gives to
Louise’s problem—“heart trouble”—suggests that this trouble is both
physical and emotional, a problem both within her body and with her
relationship to Brently. In the hour during which Louise believes Brently is
dead, her heart beats strongly—indeed, Louise feels her new independence
physically. Alone in her room, her heart races, and her whole body feels
warm. She spreads her arms open, symbolically welcoming her new life.
“Body and soul free!” she repeats to herself, a statement that shows how
total her new independence really is for her. Only when Brently walks in does
her “heart trouble” reappear, and this trouble is so acute that it kills her. The
irony of the ending is that Louise doesn’t die of joy as the doctors claim but
actually from the loss of joy. Brently’s death gave her a glimpse of a new life,
and when that new life is swiftly taken away, the shock and disappointment
kill her.
Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
Themes
The Forbidden Joy of Independence
In “The Story of an Hour,” independence is a forbidden pleasure that can be
imagined only privately. When Louise hears from Josephine and Richards of
Brently’s death, she reacts with obvious grief, and although her reaction is
perhaps more violent than other women’s, it is an appropriate one. Alone,
however, Louise begins to realize that she is now an independent woman, a
realization that enlivens and excites her. Even though these are her private
thoughts, she at first tries to squelch the joy she feels, to “beat it back with
her will.” Such resistance reveals how forbidden this pleasure really is. When
she finally does acknowledge the joy, she feels possessed by it and must
abandon herself to it as the word free escapes her lips. Louise’s life offers no
refuge for this kind of joy, and the rest of society will never accept it or
understand it. Extreme circumstances have given Louise a taste of this
forbidden fruit, and her thoughts are, in turn, extreme. She sees her life as
being absolutely hers and her new independence as the core of her being.
Overwhelmed, Louise even turns to prayer, hoping for a long life in which to
enjoy this feeling. When Brently returns, he unwittingly yanks Louise’s
independence away from her, putting it once again out of her reach. The
forbidden joy disappears as quickly as it came, but the taste of it is enough
to kill her.
The Inherent Oppressiveness of Marriage
Chopin suggests that all marriages, even the kindest ones, are inherently
oppressive. Louise, who readily admits that her husband was kind and loving,
nonetheless feels joy when she believes that he has died. Her reaction
doesn’t suggest any malice, and Louise knows that she’ll cry at Brently’s
funeral. However, despite the love between husband and wife, Louise views
Brently’s death as a release from oppression. She never names a specific
way in which Brently oppressed her, hinting instead that marriage in general
stifles both women and men. She even seems to suggest that she oppressed
Brently just as much as he oppressed her. Louise’s epiphany in which these
thoughts parade through her mind reveals the inherent oppressiveness of all
marriages, which by their nature rob people of their independence.
Motifs
Weeping
Louise’s weeping about Brently’s death highlight the dichotomy between
sorrow and happiness. Louise cries or thinks about crying for about three-
quarters of “The Story of an Hour,” stopping only when she thinks of her new
freedom. Crying is part of her life with Brently, but it will presumably be
absent from her life as an independent woman. At the beginning of the story,
Louise sobs dramatically when she learns that Brently is dead, enduring a
“storm of grief.” She continues weeping when she is alone in her room,
although the crying now is unconscious, more a physical reflex than anything
spurred by emotion. She imagines herself crying over Brently’s dead body.
Once the funeral is over in her fantasies, however, there is no further
mention of crying because she’s consumed with happiness.
Symbols
Heart Trouble
The heart trouble that afflicts Louise is both a physical and symbolic malady
that represents her ambivalence toward her marriage and unhappiness with
her lack of freedom. The fact that Louise has heart trouble is the first thing
we learn about her, and this heart trouble is what seems to make the
announcement of Brently’s death so threatening. A person with a weak
heart, after all, would not deal well with such news. When Louise reflects on
her new independence, her heart races, pumping blood through her veins.
When she dies at the end of the story, the diagnosis of “heart disease”
seems appropriate because the shock of seeing Brently was surely enough to
kill her. But the doctors’ conclusion that she’d died of overwhelming joy is
ironic because it had been the loss of joy that had actually killed her. Indeed,
Louise seems to have died of a broken heart, caused by the sudden loss of
her much-loved independence.
The Open Window
The open window from which Louise gazes for much of the story represents
the freedom and opportunities that await her after her husband has died.
From the window, Louise sees blue sky, fluffy clouds, and treetops. She hears
people and birds singing and smells a coming rainstorm. Everything that she
experiences through her senses suggests joy and spring—new life. And when
she ponders the sky, she feels the first hints of elation. Once she fully
indulges in this excitement, she feels that the open window is providing her
with life itself. The open window provides a clear, bright view into the
distance and Louise’s own bright future, which is now unobstructed by the
demands of another person. It’s therefore no coincidence that when Louise
turns from the window and the view, she quickly loses her freedom as well.
Structure and Style
In “The Story of an Hour,” Chopin employs specific structural and stylistic
techniques to heighten the drama of the hour. The structure Chopin has
chosen for “The Story of an Hour” fits the subject matter perfectly. The story
is short, made up of a series of short paragraphs, many of which consist of
just two or three sentences. Likewise, the story covers only one hour in
Louise Mallard’s life—from the moment she learns of her husband’s death to
the moment he unexpectedly returns alive. The short, dense structure
mirrors the intense hour Louise spends contemplating her new
independence. Just as Louise is completely immersed in her wild thoughts of
the moment, we are immersed along with her in this brief period of time.
This story can be read quickly, but the impact it makes is powerful. Chopin
surprises us first with Louise’s elated reaction when she first murmurs “free”
to herself. She shocks us again at the conclusion when she dies upon
Brently’s return. The “heart disease” mentioned at the end of the story
echoes the “heart trouble” discussed at the beginning, intensifying the twist
ending and bringing the story to a satisfying close.
Because such a short story leaves no room for background information,
flashbacks, or excessive speculation, Chopin succeeds in making every
sentence important by employing an almost poetic writing style. She uses
repetition to highlight important points, such as when she repeats the
word open throughout the story to emphasize the freedom of Louise’s new
life. She has Louise repeat the word free over and over again as well, which
is one of the few words Louise actually speaks aloud in the story and
indicates how much she cherishes her newfound freedom. Besides repeating
words, Chopin also repeats phrases and sentence structures to highlight
important points. For example, Chopin writes, “She breathed a quick prayer
that life might be long. It was only yesterday that she had thought with a
shudder that life might be long.” The identical phrasing of the second half of
each sentence reveals how drastically Louise’s life has changed—she once
shuddered at the thought of a long life, but now she prays for it. Finally,
Chopin makes the prose of the story beautiful by using alliteration and
internal rhymes. For example, Josephine “revealed in half concealing” when
she tells Louise the news, and Brently reappears “composedly carrying” his
belongings. All of Chopin’s stylistic and structural techniques combine to
make this very short story powerful.
Important Quotations Explained
1. 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.
This quotation appears after Louise has gone alone to her room to deal with
the news of Brently’s death. After an initial fit of tears, Louise looks out her
window at the wide-open spaces below. This quotation is our first hint that
Louise’s reaction to Brently’s death will be surprising and that Louise is very
different from other women. Whereas most women would gaze reflectively at
the sky and clouds, Louise’s gaze suggests something different, something
shrewder or more active. What she sees as she gazes out the window is
different from what other women would likely see after their husbands have
died. Not long after this passage, Louise acknowledges the joyous feeling of
independence that Brently’s death has given her. Here, at the window, the
first breaths of these feelings are stirring, and her “intelligent thought” will
quickly engage once again as she processes these feelings and allows
herself to analyze what they mean.
2. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday
she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.
This quotation appears close to the end of the story, just before Louise
leaves her bedroom to go back downstairs, and illuminates the extent of
Louise’s elation. Before Brently’s death, Louise viewed her life with
trepidation, envisioning years of dull, unchanging dependence and
oppression. The “shudder” she felt was one of dread. Now, however, she is
free and independent, and her life is suddenly worth living. Whereas she
once hoped life would be short, she now prays for a long, happy life. This
passage, besides showing us how fully Louise feels her independence, also
highlights the unexpectedness of Louise’s reaction. Rather than dread a life
lived alone, this solitude is, for Louise, reason enough to anticipate the future
eagerly. When Brently returns, she dies, unable to face the return of the life
that she’d dreaded so much.