The Mystery of Love: As Seen in Kate Chopin's "A Story of an Hour"

Kate Chopin's "A Story of an Hour" is vague in the details about what had transpired in the unknown amount of time between the wedding of Brently and Louise Mallard and that fateful hour that transpires in the story, but what the author does allude to, in the change that takes place in the emotions of Louise as she sat alone in her room, is the condition of the character's true feelings, her heart.

There is no doubt as to what were Louise's feelings for her husband. Her lamentation at hearing the news of Brentley's supposed death is clearly a display of grief from the loss of a loved one: one who has loved you and you have loved in return. Louise herself knew that her husband loved her: "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.." She also affirms that she loved him as well: "And yet she had loved him. . ." So what is it that makes this woman's lament turn to rejoicing?

The answer is simple. Yes, Louise loved and was loved by Brentley, but there was something that took that place of preeminence in her heart. The word that she utters: "free" is a clear indication that she saw her marriage, perhaps even her love, as something that was putting constraints upon her, "bending" her will to conform to that of her husband. Thus, the death of her husband was in fact a death of that "private will" which made her submit, even out of love, to itself.

Louise (or rather, Chopin through Louise) is placing a higher priority on herself. As Chopin writes about Louise: "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!" In other words, the love of yourself is what should be the "impulse of your being" not the love of others. I strongly disagree with Chopin. Love is not an unsolved mystery; it is about putting others before yourself, not viewing them as holding you back from doing what you truly want to do! True love is when a man cares for the safety and happiness his wife even above his own, and the wife returns that care with devotion to her husband. In this, it becomes their pleasure to please each other, and both are fulfilled in that simplicity of love.

In the end, Louise and Brentley might have romantically loved each other, but by the end, it is clear that they, or at least Louise, did not share a true love. It is also clear why Kate Chopin viewed love as an enigma, for she had not learned the beautiful simplicity of that wonderful mystery is about loving another above yourself, not yourself above all others.