Gender Readings. Top Ten. Ренц Т.Г - 6 стр.

  1          KATE CHÎÐIN
             THE STORY OF AN HOUR

      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 re-
ceived, 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.
       Comment. The opening action is presented quickly and economi-
cally. We are not given Mrs. Mallard’s first name. And we might wonder if
there is any significance in the name “Mallard”. Do we hear something
odd in the descri ption of Mrs. Mallard’s ailment as a “heart trouble”?
More important than these details is the announcement of her hus-
band’s death. Mrs. Mallard is contrasted with other women who sit para-
lyzed by such news — women who refuse, initially at least, to accept the
significance of such an announcement. Is there a difference between ac-
cepting the significance of a husband’s death and accepting the simple
fact of his death? We notice, finally, that Mrs. Mallard weeps with “sud-
den wild abandonment”.
      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.

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