Situational and verbal irony present in the story

Kate Chopin’s “The Account of an Hour” is the adventure of one female’s brief minute of clarity and freedom; an hour of freedom awarded by the fatality of her husband. Mrs. Mallard is usually shocked to death by the realization that her husband is in fact surviving. The following article discusses the presence of both situational and spoken irony in “The Account of an Hour”.

“The Story of an Hour” demonstrates situational irony at its conclusion. The unfairness from the situation is undeniable; costly odd inexplicable tale.

Mrs. Mallard converts from ful sadness to tremendous happiness; only to possess her happiness stolen from her by very thing which usually caused her both unhappiness and pleasure. The loss of life of Mister. Mallard at first brings his wife unhappiness and your woman locks their self in her room, wherever she sits staring out the window in believed. Her peaceful contemplation potential clients her to keep in mind how the lady was remedied by her husband. Your woman slowly concerns the recognition that she’ll no longer be controlled by Mr.

Mallard; that your woman was a cost-free woman.

The scene conveying her new found freedom was intense, showing the momentousness of the recognition. This level in the story makes the finishing, while at initially unbelievable, a lot more realistic. Someone is forced to imagine the unbelievable; that the distress of discovering her partner alive, following finally getting free, was too much for her heart to bear.  In a sarcastic tiefstapelei, an example of spoken irony, Chopin writes which the doctor reported the cause of fatality as the enjoyment of viewing her hubby was this sort of a shock that she died instantly. In fact it was the realization which the beautiful life she imagined for herself without her husband was not a longer a reality. This was this sort of a horrifying thought that she suffered a heart attack and died.

The situational paradox present in the storyline from starting to end was that in the beginning she was wrought with misery at the news of her husband’s fatality; but then within a moment of clarity she realized that the lady was totally free of her partner’s control. She would no longer have to bend her will to his. The true irony was Mrs. Mallard’s realization that after her spouse was in she wished that her life will be short lived, great that her husband was dead, she wished for any long free of charge life (3). Before her husband moves through the front door, she got imagined a lifetime of true liberty, of being her own person. Chopin creates; “Spring times, and summer time days, and days that might be her own” (3).

To summarize, “The History of an Hour” is a history which leads to situational paradox. The author sets the reader up for the unexpected and unfair ending in which Mrs. Mallard, and not her husband, eventually ends up dead. The irony of Mrs. Mallard seeing that although unfortunate about her husband’s loss of life, the overpowering, undeniable real truth of her freedom causes her great joy. The short-lived delight results in the story’s sarcastic twist of fate in its conclusion. Several readers might have discovered the conclusion to get Mrs. Mallard’s “just desserts”, where other folks may include felt that the conclusion was an unjust twist of fate. Whatever the reader’s model of the realization; the situational and mental irony within “The Tale of an Hour” is unquestionable.

Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. The Story of the Hour. Virginia Commonwealth University. 17 May 3 years ago <>

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