Gender Readings. Top Ten. Ренц Т.Г - 8 стр.

pulse beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch
of her body.
       Comment. In the first sentence the word “abandoned” echoes the
earlier descri ption of Mrs. Mallard’s “wild abandonment”. But she now
seems in control of herself. Her repetition of “free” signals her excite-
ment and perhaps convinces her of its truth. Her emotional excitement is
rendered in physical imagery: her pulse beats fast, and her blood courses
through her body — both signs of reawakened feeling.
      She did not stop to ask if it were not a monstrous joy that held
her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the sugges-
tion 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
her 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 face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recog-
nized as the strongest impulse of her being!
        Comment. We pause over the words “monstrous joy”. Clearly Mrs.
Mallard is overjoyed. And from one perspective her joy, however honestly
felt, is monstrous. She is happy — exultantly happy — that her husband is
dead. But the author makes clear that — Mrs. Mallard does not think:
about what she is feeling.
      The first paragraph underscores Mrs. Mallard’s control and clear-
sightedness. Her sense of confidence, antici pated earlier, becomes
explicit and strong. We wonder if her husband treated her cruelly,
but the text answers that he has been kind, which makes Mrs. Mal-
lard’s open-armed welcome of the coming years indeed monstrous. In
the next paragraph Chopin does not exactly condemn Mr. Mallard but
does suggest that Mrs. Mallard had to bend her will to his. Kind or

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