, just as it did with Calixta in “The Storm.” Mrs. Mallard has just learned of a horrible death but yet she could not help but see that the trees were blooming with new spring life; there was new fallen rain, and birds were singing. The rain, as it did in “The Storm,” replenished and allowed nature to grow just as the news would allow Mrs. Mallard to grow as a reborn, liberated women, free from bondage. “And yet she loved him – sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter!” (21) It seems as if she is trying to convince herself there is nothing wrong with her feeling this way. There was something about the thought of living for herself, she would no longer have anyone to answer to, she was free to be herself, and most of all free to love again. “Free! Body and soul free!” (21) Mrs. Mallard was not making herself ill as her sister had thought. She was taking in an elixir of life. It was almost as is her body had been healed. The heavy weight that was once on her chest and heart had been lifted. Louise emerges from her bedroom a liberated woman and as she descends the stairs she is brought back to reality by Brently Mallard opening the front door. She collapses and dies perhaps from the shock of losing her freedom once again. “The Storm” and “The Story of an Hour” end very differently. “The Storm” ends on a happy note with the family having a feast of a dinner and laughing so loud anyone might have heard them. Calixta was unfaithful to her husband and feels no remorse for what she has done. She was an unhappy housewife and was bored with her daily routine but Alcee changed that. He came in and added a little spice to her life and brought out a reborn woman that had been lost. “The Story of an Hour” is a tragedy. In a sense Mrs. Mallard is being unfaithful to her dead husband because she ...
