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7.1 Exploring Plot and First-Person Poin…
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7.1 Exploring Plot and First-Person Point of View
In "How I Met My Husband," even the title hints at the importance that events and decisions are likely to have in the development of the story. But, because the narrator is looking back at situations and actions, her insights and feelings are also prominent, creating a reflective tone.
"How I Met My Husband" and Point of View
Wayne Clugston, author of Journey Into Literature, examines the role of first-person voice in Alice Munro's How I Met My Husband.
Critical Thinking Questions Why does Wayne Clugston say that first-person point of view might be "unreliable"? What is another story you have read in first-person, and how did the use of first-person enhance or detract from the story?
Alice Munro (1931—)
ASSOCIATED PRESS/ChadHipolito/The Canadian Press
Alice Laidlaw Munro was born in Wingham, a small town in southern Ontario, Canada. She began publishing short stories when she was a student at the University of Western Ontario. Since then, she has published seven collections of her stories, three of which received the Governor General's Award for fiction. Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013 in recognition of her distinctive craft and contributions to short story writing. Much of her work reflects perceptions she gained from observing the ordinary happenings and relationships of people in her small town and its rural surroundings. Speaking subtly to realities in today's world, Munro's work has a "looking back" quality, developed not with nostalgia but with clarity, humor, and insight, especially about women.
How I Met My Husband
Alice Munro (1974) Note that this story uses a first-person point of view. Everything is seen through the eyes of a woman who is looking back at an experience she had as a teenager."i | We heard the plane come over at noon, roaring through the radio news, and we were sure it was going to hit the house, so we all ran out into the yard. We saw it come in over the tree tops, all red and silver, the first close-up plane I ever saw. Mrs. Peebles screamed."Crash landing," their little boy said. Joey was his name."It's okay," said Dr. Peebles. "He knows what he's doing." Dr. Peebles was only an animal doctor, but had a calming way of talking, like any doctor.This was my first job—working for Dr. and Mrs. Peebles, who had bought an old house out on the Fifth Line, about five miles out of town. It was just when the trend was starting of town people buying up old farms, not to work them but to live on them. | | | We watched the plane land across the road, where the fairgrounds used to be. It did make a good landing field, nice and level for the old race track, and the barns and display sheds torn down for scrap lumber so there was nothing in the way. Even the old grandstand bays had burned."All right," said Mrs. Peebles, snappy as she always was when she got over her nerves. "Let's go back in the house. Let's not stand here gawking like a set of farmers."She didn't say that to hurt my feelings. It never occurred to her.I was just setting the dessert down when Loretta Bird arrived, out of breath, at the screen door."I thought it was going to crash into the house and kill youse all!" | 5 | | She lived on the next place and the Peebleses thought she was a country-woman, they didn't know the difference. She and her husband didn't farm, he worked on the roads and had a bad name for drinking. They had seven children and couldn't get credit at the HiWay Grocery. The Peebleses made her welcome, not knowing any better, as I say, and offered her dessert.Dessert was never anything to write home about, at their place. A dish of Jell-O or sliced bananas or fruit out of a tin. "Have a house without a pie, be ashamed until you die," my mother used to say, but Mrs. Peebles operated differently.Loretta Bird saw me getting the can of peaches."Oh, never mind," she said. "I haven't got the right kind of a stomach to trust what comes out of those tins, I can only eat home canning."I could have slapped her. I bet she never put down fruit in her life. | 10 | | "I know what he's landed here for," she said. "He's got permission to use the fairgrounds and take people up for rides. It costs a dollar. It's the same fellow who was over at Palmerston last week and was up the lakeshore before that. I wouldn't go up, if you paid me.""I'd jump at the chance," Dr. Peebles said. "I'd like to see this neighborhood from the air."Mrs. Peebles said she would just as soon see it from the ground. Joey said he wanted to go and Heather did, too. Joey was nine and Heather was seven."Would you, Edie?" Heather said.I said I didn't know. I was scared but I never admitted that, especially in front of children I was taking care of. | 15 | | "People are going to be coming out here in their cars raising dust and trampling your property, if I was you I would complain," Loretta said. She hooked her legs around the chair rung and I knew we were in for a lengthy visit.After Dr. Peebles went back to his office or out on his next call and Mrs. Peebles went for her nap, she would hang around me while I was trying to do the dishes. She would pass remarks about the Peebleses in their own house."She wouldn't find time to lay down in the middle of the day, if she had seven kids like I got."She asked me did they fight and did they keep things in the dresser drawer not to have babies with. She said it was a sin if they did. I pretended I didn't know what she was talking about.I was fifteen and away from home for the first time. My parents had made the effort and sent me to high school for a year, but I didn't like it, I was shy of strangers and the work was hard, they didn't make it nice for you or explain the way they do now. At the end of the year the averages were published in the paper, and mine came out at the very bottom, 37 percent. My father said that's enough and I didn't blame him. The last thing I wanted, anyway, was to go on and end up teaching school. It happened the very day the paper came out with my disgrace in it, Dr. Peebles was staying at our place for dinner, having just helped one of our cows have twins, and he said I looked smart to him and his wife was looking for a girl to help. He said she felt tied down, with the two children, out in the country. I guess she would, my mother said, being polite, though I could tell from her face she was wondering what on earth it would be like to have only two children and no barn work, and then to be complaining. | 20 | | When I went home I would describe to them the work I had to do, and it made everybody laugh. Mrs. Peebles had an automatic washer and dryer, the first I ever saw. I have had those in my own home for such a long time now it's hard to remember how much of a miracle it was to me, not having to struggle with the wringer and hang up and haul down. Let alone not having to heat water. Then there was practically no baking. Mrs. Peebles said she couldn't make pie crust, the most amazing thing I ever heard a woman admit. I could, of course, and I could make light biscuits and a white cake and a dark cake, but they didn't want it, she said they watched their figures. The only thing I didn't like about working there, in fact, was feeling half hungry a lot of the time. I used to bring back a box of doughnuts made out at home, and hide them under my bed. The children found out, and I didn't mind sharing, but I thought I better bind them to secrecy.The day after the plane landed Mrs. Peebles put both children in the car and drove over to Chesley to get their hair cut. There was a good woman then at Chesley for doing hair. She got hers done at the same place Mrs. Peebles did, and that meant they would be gone a good while. She had to pick a day Dr. Peebles wasn't going out into the country, she didn't have her own car. Cars were still in short supply then, after the war.I loved being left in the house alone, to do my work at leisure. The kitchen was all white and bright yellow, with fluorescent lights. That was before they ever thought of making the appliances all different colors and doing the cupboards like dark old wood and hiding the lighting. I loved light. I loved the double sink. So would anybody new-come from washing dishes in a dish pan with a rag-plugged hole on an oilcloth-covered table by light of a coal-oil lamp. I kept everything shining.The bathroom too. I had a bath in there once a week. They wouldn't have minded if I took one oftener, but to me it seemed like asking too much, or maybe risking making it less wonderful. The basin and the tub and the toilet were all pink, and there were glass doors with flamingoes painted on them, to shut off the tub. The light had a rosy cast and the mat sank under your feet like snow, except that it was warm. The mirror was three-way. With the mirror all steamed up and the air like a perfume cloud, from things I was allowed to use, I stood up on the side of the tub and admired myself naked, from three directions. Sometimes I thought about the way we lived out at home and the way we lived here and how one way was so hard to imagine when you were living the other way. But I thought it was still a lot easier living the way we lived at home, to picture something like this, the painted flamingoes and the warmth and the soft mat, than it was for anybody knowing only things like this to picture how it was the other way. And why was that?I was through my jobs in no time, and had the vegetables peeled for supper and sitting in cold water besides. Then I went into Mrs. Peebles' bedroom. I had been in there plenty of times, cleaning, and I always took a good look in her closet, at the clothes she had hanging there. I wouldn't have looked in her drawers, but a closet is open to anybody. That's a lie. I would have looked in drawers, but I would have felt worse doing it and been more scared she could tell. | 25 | | Some clothes in her closet she wore all the time, I was quite familiar with them. Others she never put on, they were pushed to the back. I was disappointed to see no wedding dress. But there was one long dress I could just see the skirt of, and I was hungering to see the rest. Now I took note of where it hung and lifted it out. It was satin, a lovely weight on my arm, light bluish-green in color, almost silvery. It had a fitted, pointed waist and a full skirt and an off-the-shoulder fold hiding the little sleeves.Next thing was easy. I got out of my own things and slipped it on. I was slimmer at fifteen than anybody would believe who knows me now and the fit was beautiful. I didn't, of course, have a strapless bra on, which was what it needed, I just had to slide my straps down my arms under the material. Then I tried pinning up my hair, to get the effect. One thing led to another. I put on rouge and lipstick and eyebrow pencil from her dresser. The heat of the day and the weight of the satin and all the excitement made me thirsty, and I went out to the kitchen, got-up as I was, to get a glass of ginger ale with ice cubes from the refrigerator. The Peebles drank ginger ale, or fruit drinks, all day, like water, and I was getting so I did too. Also there was no limit on ice cubes, which I was so fond of I would even put them in a glass of milk.I turned from putting the ice tray back and saw a man watching me through the screen. It was the luckiest thing in the world I didn't spill the ginger ale down the front of me then and there."I never meant to scare you. I knocked but you were getting the ice out, you didn't hear me."I couldn't see what he looked like, he was dark the way somebody is pressed up against a screen door with the bright daylight behind them. I only knew he wasn't from around here. | 30 | | "I'm from the plane over there. My name is Chris Watters and what I was wondering was if I could use that pump."There was a pump in the yard. That was the way the people used to get their water. Now I noticed he was carrying a pail."You're welcome," I said, "I can get it from the tap and save you pumping." I guess I wanted him to know we had piped water, didn't pump ourselves."I don't mind the exercise." He didn't move, though, and finally he said, "Were you going to a dance?"Seeing a stranger there had made me entirely forget how I was dressed. | 35 | | "Or is that the way ladies around here generally get dressed up in the afternoon?"I didn't know how to joke back then. I was too embarrassed."You live here? Are you the lady of the house?""I'm the hired girl."Some people change when they find that out, their whole way of looking at you and speaking to you changes, but his didn't. | 40 | | "Well, I just wanted to tell you you look very nice. I was so surprised when I looked in the door and saw you. Just because you looked so nice and beautiful."I wasn't even old enough then to realize how out of the common it is, for a man to say something like that to a woman, or somebody he is treating like a woman. For a man to say a word like beautiful. I wasn't old enough to realize or to say anything back, or in fact to do anything but wish he would go away. Not that I didn't like him, but just that it upset me so, having him look at me, and me trying to think of something to say.He must have understood. He said good-bye, and thanked me, and went and started filling his pail from the pump. I stood behind the Venetian blinds in the dining room, watching him. When he had gone, I went into the bedroom and took the dress off and put it back in the same place. I dressed in my own clothes and took my hair down and washed my face, wiping it on Kleenex, which I threw in the wastebasket. | 45 | | The Peebleses asked me what kind of man he was. Young, middle-aged, short, tall? I couldn't say."Good-looking?" Dr. Peebles teased me. | | | I couldn't think a thing but that he would be coming to get his water again, he would be talking to Dr. or Mrs. Peebles making friends with them, and he would mention seeing me that first afternoon dressed up. Why not mention it? He would think it was funny. And no idea of the trouble it would get me into.After supper the Peebleses drove into town to go to a movie. She wanted to go somewhere with her hair fresh done. I sat in my bright kitchen wondering what to do, knowing I would never sleep. Mrs. Peebles might not fire me, when she found out, but it would give her a different feeling about me altogether. This was the first place I ever worked but I already had picked up things about the way people feel when you are working for them. They like to think you aren't curious. Not just that you aren't dishonest, that isn't enough. They like to feel you don't notice things, that you don't think or wonder about anything but what they liked to eat and how they like things ironed, and so on. I don't mean they weren't kind to me, because they were. They had me eat my meals with them (to tell the truth I expected to, I didn't know there were families who don't) and sometimes they took me along in the car. But all the same.I went up and checked on the children being asleep and then I went out. I had to do it. I crossed the road and went in the old fairgrounds gate. The plane looked unnatural sitting there, and shining with the moon. Off at the far side of the fairgrounds, where the bush was taking over, I saw his tent.He was sitting outside it smoking a cigarette. He saw me coming."Hello, were you looking for a plane ride? I don't start taking people up till tomorrow." Then he looked again and said, "Oh, it's you. I didn't know you without your long dress on." | 50 | | My heart was knocking away, my tongue was dried up. I had to say something. But I couldn't. My throat was closed and I was like a deaf-and-dumb."Did you want a ride? Sit down. Have a cigarette."I couldn't even shake my head to say no, so he gave me one."Put it in your mouth or I can't light it. It's a good thing I'm used to shy ladies."I did. It wasn't the first time I had smoked a cigarette, actually. My girlfriend out home, Muriel Lowe, used to steal them from her brother. | 55 | | "Look at your hand shaking. Did you just want to have a chat, or what?"In one burst I said, "I wisht you wouldn't say anything about that dress.""What dress? Oh, the long dress.""It's Mrs. Peebles'.""Whose? Oh, the lady you work for? Is that it? She wasn't home so you got dressed up in her dress, eh? You got dressed up and played queen. I don't blame you. You're not smoking the cigarette right. Don't just puff. Draw it in. Did anybody ever show you how to inhale? Are you scared I'll tell on you? Is that it?" | 60 | | I was so ashamed at having to ask him to connive this way I couldn't nod. I just looked at him and he saw yes."Well I won't. I won't in the slightest way mention it or embarrass you. I give you my word of honor."Then he changed the subject, to help me out, seeing I couldn't even thank him."What do you think of this sign?"It was a board sign lying practically at my feet. SEE THE WORLD FROM THE SKY. ADULTS $1.00, CHILDREN 50¢. QUALIFIED PILOT. | 65 | | "My old sign was getting pretty beat up, I thought I'd make a new one. That's what I've been doing with my time today."The lettering wasn't all that handsome, I thought. I could have done a better one in half an hour."I'm not an expert at signmaking.""It's very good," I said."I don't need it for publicity, word of mouth is usually enough. I turned away two carloads tonight. I felt like taking it easy. I didn't tell them ladies were dropping in to visit me." | 70 | | Now I remembered the children and I was scared again, in case one of them had waked up and called me and I wasn't there."Do you have to go so soon?"I remembered some manners. "Thank you for the cigarette.""Don't forget. You have my word of honor."I tore off across the fairgrounds, scared I'd see the car heading home from town. My sense of time was mixed up, I didn't know how long I'd been out of the house. But it was all right, it wasn't late, the children were asleep. I got in bed myself and lay thinking what a lucky end to the day, after all, and among things to be grateful for I could be grateful Loretta Bird hadn't been the one who caught me. | 75 | | The yard and borders didn't get trampled, it wasn't as bad as that. All the same it seemed very public, around the house. The sign was on the fairgrounds gate. People came mostly after supper but a good many in the afternoon, too. The Bird children all came without fifty cents between them and hung on the gate. We got used to the excitement of the plane coming in and taking off, it wasn't excitement any more. I never went over, after that one time, but would see him when he came to get his water. I would be out on the steps doing sitting-down work, like preparing vegetables, if I could."Why don't you come over? I'll take you up in my plane.""I'm saving my money," I said, because I couldn't think of anything else."For what? For getting married?"I shook my head. | 80 | | "I'll take you up for free if you come sometime when it's slack. I thought you would come, and have another cigarette."I made a face to hush him, because you never could tell when the children would be sneaking around the porch, or Mrs. Peebles herself listening in the house. Sometimes she came out and had a conversation with him. He told her things he hadn't bothered to tell me. But then I hadn't thought to ask. He told her he had been in the War, that was where he learned to fly a plane, and now he couldn't settle down to ordinary life, this was what he liked. She said she couldn't imagine anybody liking such a thing. Though sometimes, she said, she was almost bored enough to try anything herself, she wasn't brought up to living in the country. It's all my husband's idea, she said. This was news to me."Maybe you ought to give flying lessons," she said."Would you take them?"She just laughed. | 85 | | Sunday was a busy flying day in spite of it being preached against from two pulpits. We were all sitting out watching. Joey and Heather were over on the fence with the Bird kids. Their father had said they could go, after their mother saying all week they couldn't.A car came down the road past the parked cars and pulled up right in the drive. It was Loretta Bird who got out, all importance, and on the driver's side another woman got out, more sedately. She was wearing sunglasses."This is a lady looking for the man that flies the plane," Loretta Bird said. "I heard her inquire in the hotel coffee shop where I was having a Coke and I brought her out.""I'm sorry to bother you," the lady said. "I'm Alice Kelling, Mr. Watters' fiancée." | 90 | | This Alice Kelling had on a pair of brown and white checked slacks and a yellow top. Her bust looked to me rather low and bumpy. She had a worried face. Her hair had had a permanent, but had grown out, and she wore a yellow band to keep it off her face. Nothing in the least pretty or even young-looking about her. But you could tell from how she talked she was from the city, or educated, or both.Dr. Peebles stood up and introduced himself and his wife and me and asked her to be seated."He's up in the air right now, but you're welcome to sit and wait. He gets his water here and he hasn't been yet. He'll probably take his break about five.""That is him, then?" said Alice Kelling, wrinkling and straining at the sky."He's not in the habit of running out on you, taking a different name?" Dr. Peebles laughed. He was the one, not his wife, to offer iced tea. Then she sent me into the kitchen to fix it. She smiled. She was wearing sunglasses too. | 95 | | "He never mentioned his fiancée," she said.I loved fixing iced tea with lots of ice and slices of lemon in tall glasses. I ought to have mentioned before, Dr. Peebles was an abstainer, at least around the house, or I wouldn't have been allowed to take the place. I had to fix a glass for Loretta Bird, too, though it galled me, and when I went out she had settled in my lawn chair, leaving me the steps."I knew you was a nurse when I first heard you in that coffee shop.""How would you know a thing like that?""I get my hunches about people. Was that how you met him, nursing?" | 100 | | "Chris? Well yes. Yes, it was.""Oh, were you overseas?" said Mrs. Peebles."No, it was before he went overseas. I nursed him when he was stationed at Centralia and had a ruptured appendix. We got engaged and then he went overseas. My, this is refreshing, after a long drive.""He'll be glad to see you," Dr. Peebles said, "It's a rackety kind of life, isn't it, not staying in one place long enough to really make friends.""Youse've had a long engagement," Loretta Bird said. | 105 | | Alice Kelling passed that over. "I was going to get a room at the hotel, but when I was offered directions I came on out. Do you think I could phone them?""No need," Dr. Peebles said. "You're five miles away from him if you stay at the hotel. Here, you're right across the road. Stay with us. We've got rooms on rooms, look at this big house."Asking people to stay, just like that, is certainly a country thing, and maybe seemed natural to him now, but not to Mrs. Peebles, from the way she said, oh yes, we have plenty of room. Or to Alice Kelling, who kept protesting, but let herself be worn down. I got the feeling it was a temptation to her, to be that close. I was trying for a look at her ring. Her nails were painted red, her fingers were freckled and wrinkled. It was a tiny stone. Muriel Lowe's cousin had one twice as big.Chris came to get his water, later in the afternoon just as Dr. Peebles had predicted. He must have recognized the car from a way off. He came smiling."Here I am chasing after you to see what you're up to," called Alice Kelling. She got up and went to meet him and they kissed, just touched, in front of us. | 110 | | "You're going to spend a lot on gas that way," Chris said.Dr. Peebles invited Chris to stay for supper, since he had already put up the sign that said: NO MORE RIDES TILL 7 P.M. Mrs. Peebles wanted it served in the yard, in spite of bugs. One thing strange to anybody from the country is this eating outside. I had made a potato salad earlier and she had made a jellied salad, that was one thing she could do, so it was just a matter of getting those out, and some sliced meat and cucumbers and fresh leaf lettuce. Loretta Bird hung around for some time saying, "Oh, well. I guess I better get home to those yappers," and, "It's so nice just sitting here, I sure hate to get up," but nobody invited her, I was relieved to see, and finally she had to go.That night after rides were finished Alice Kelling and Chris went off somewhere in her car. I lay awake till they got back. When I saw the car lights sweep my ceiling I got up to look down on them through the slats of my blind. I don't know what I thought I was going to see. Muriel Lowe and I used to sleep on her front veranda and watch her sister and her sister's boyfriend saying good night. Afterwards we couldn't get to sleep, for longing for somebody to kiss us and rub up against us and we would talk about suppose you were out in a boat with a boy and he wouldn't bring you in to shore unless you did it, or what if somebody got you trapped in a barn, you would have to, wouldn't you, it wouldn't be your fault. Muriel said her two girl cousins used to try with a toilet paper roll that one of them was a boy. We wouldn't do anything like that; just lay and wondered.All that happened was that Chris got out on one side and she got out on the other and they walked off separately—him towards the fairgrounds and her toward the house. I got back in bed and imagined about me coming home with him, not like that.Next morning Alice Kelling got up late and I fixed a grapefruit for her the way I had learned and Mrs. Peebles sat down with her to visit and have another cup of coffee. Mrs. Peebles seemed pleased enough now, having company. Alice Kelling said she guessed she better get used to putting in a day just watching Chris take off and come down, and Mrs. Peebles said she didn't know if she should suggest it because Alice Kelling was the one with the car, but the lake was only twenty-five miles away and what a good day for a picnic. | 115 | | Alice Kelling took her up on the idea and by eleven o'clock they were in the car, with Joey and Heather and a sandwich lunch I had made. The only thing was that Chris hadn't come down, and she wanted to tell him where they were going."Edie'll go over and tell him," Mrs. Peebles said. "There's no problem."Alice Kelling wrinkled her face and agreed."Be sure and tell him we'll be back by five!"I didn't see that he would be concerned about knowing this right away, and I thought of him eating whatever he ate over there, alone, cooking on his camp stove, so I got to work and mixed up a crumb cake and baked it, in between the other work I had to do; then, when it was a bit cooled, wrapped it in a tea towel. I didn't do anything to myself but take off my apron and comb my hair. I would like to have put some makeup on, but I was too afraid it would remind him of the way he first saw me, and that would humiliate me all over again. | 120 | | He had come and put another sign on the gate: NO RIDES THIS P.M. APOLOGIES. I worried that he wasn't feeling well. No sign of him outside and the tent flap was down. I knocked on the pole."Come in," he said, in a voice that would just as soon have said Stay out.I lifted the flap."Oh, it's you. I'm sorry. I didn't know it was you."He had been just sitting on the side of the bed, smoking. Why not at least sit and smoke in the fresh air? | 125 | | "I brought a cake and hope you're not sick," I said."Why would I be sick? Oh—that sign. That's all right. I'm just tired of talking to people. I don't mean you. Have a seat." He pinned back the tent flap. "Get some fresh air in here."I sat on the edge of the bed, there was no place else. It was one of those fold-up cots, really; I remembered and gave him his fiancée's message.He ate some of the cake. "Good.""Put the rest away for when you're hungry later." | 130 | | "I'll tell you a secret. I won't be around here much longer.""Are you getting married?""Ha ha. What time did you say they'd be back?""Five o'clock.""Well, by that time this place will have seen the last of me. A plane can get further than a car." He unwrapped the cake and ate another piece of it, absent-mindedly. | 135 | | "Now you'll be thirsty.""There's some water in the pail.""It won't be very cold. I could bring some fresh. I could bring some ice from the refrigerator.""No," he said. "I don't want you to go. I want a nice long time of saying good-bye to you."He put the cake away carefully and sat beside me and started those little kisses so soft I can't ever let myself think about them, such kindness in his face and lovely kisses, all over my eyelids and neck and ears, all over, then me kissing back as well as I could (I had only kissed a boy on a dare before, and kissed my own arms for practice) and we lay back on the cot and pressed together, just gently, and he did some other things, not bad things or not in a bad way. It was lovely in the tent, that smell of grass and hot tent cloth with the sun beating down on it, and he said, "I wouldn't do you any harm for the world." Once, when he had rolled on top of me and we were sort of rocking together on the cot, he said softly, "Oh, no," and freed himself and jumped up and got the water pail. He splashed some of it on his neck and face, and the little bit left, on me lying there. | 140 | | "That's to cool us off, miss."When we said good-bye I wasn't at all sad, because he held my face and said, "I'm going to write you a letter. I'll tell you where I am and maybe you can come and see me. Would you like that? Okay then. You wait." I was really glad I think to get away from him, it was like he was piling presents on me I couldn't get the pleasure of till I considered them alone. | 145 | | No consternation at first about the plane being gone. They thought he had taken somebody up, and I didn't enlighten them. Dr. Peebles had phoned he had to go to the country, so there was just us having supper, and then Loretta Bird thrusting her head in the door and saying, "I see he's took off.""What?" said Alice Kelling, and pushed back her chair."The kids come and told me this afternoon he was taking down his tent. Did he think he'd run through all the business there was around here? He didn't take off without letting you know, did he?" | | | "He'll send me word," Alice Kelling said. "He'll probably phone tonight. He's terribly restless, since the war.""Edie, he didn't mention to you, did he?" Mrs. Kelling said, "When you took over the message?""Yes," I said. So far so true."Well, why didn't you say?" All of them were looking at me. "Did he say where he was going?""He said he might try Bayfield," I said. What made me tell such a lie? I didn't intend it. | 150 | | "Bayfield, how far is that?" said Alice Kelling.Mrs. Peebles said, "Thirty, thirty-five miles.""That's not far. Oh, well, that's really not far at all. It's on the lake, isn't it?"You'd think I'd be ashamed of myself setting her on the wrong track. I did it to give him more time, whatever time he needed. I lied for him, and also, I have to admit, for me. Women should stick together and not do things like that. I see that now, but didn't then. I never thought of myself as being in any way like her, or coming to the same troubles, ever.She hadn't taken her eyes off me. I thought she suspected my lie. | 155 | | "When did he mention this to you?""Earlier.""When you were over at the plane?""Yes.""You must've stayed and had a chat." She smiled at me, not a nice smile. "You must've stayed and had a little visit with him." | 160 | | "I took a cake," I said, thinking that telling some truth would spare me telling the rest."We didn't have a cake," said Mrs. Peebles rather sharply."I baked one."Alice Kelling said, "That was very friendly of you.""Did you get permission," said Loretta Bird. "You never know what these girls'll do next," she said. "It's not they mean harm so much, as they're ignorant." | 165 | | "The cake is neither here nor there," Mrs. Peebles broke in. "Edie, I wasn't aware you knew Chris that well."I didn't know what to say."I'm not surprised," Alice Kelling said in a high voice. "I knew by the look of her as soon as I saw her. We get them at the hospital all the time." She looked hard at me with her stretched smile. "Having their babies. We have to put them in a special ward because of their diseases. Little country tramps. Fourteen and fifteen years old. You should see the babies they have, too.""There was a bad woman here in town had a baby that pus was running out of its eyes," Loretta Bird put in."Wait a minute," said Mrs. Peebles. "What is this talk? Edie. What about you and Mr. Watters? Were you intimate with him?" | 170 | | "Yes," I said. I was thinking of us lying on the cot and kissing, wasn't that intimate? And I would never deny it.They were all one minute quiet, even Loretta Bird."Well," said Mrs. Peebles, "I am surprised. I think I need a cigarette. This is the first of any such tendencies I've seen in her," she said, speaking to Alice Kelling, but Alice Kelling was looking at me."Loose little bitch." Tears ran down her face. "Loose little bitch, aren't you? I knew as soon as I saw you. Men despise girls like you. He just made use of you and went off, you know that, don't you? Girls like you are just nothing, they're just public conveniences, just filthy little rags!""Oh, now," said Mrs. Peebles. | 175 | | "Filthy," Alice Kelling sobbed. "Filthy little rag!""Don't get yourself upset," Loretta Bird said. She was swollen up with pleasure at being in on this scene. "Men are all the same.""Edie, I'm very surprised," Mrs. Peebles said. "I thought your parents were so strict. You don't want to have a baby, do you?"I'm still ashamed of what happened next. I lost control, just like a six-year-old, I started howling. "You don't get a baby from just doing that!""You see. Some of them are that ignorant," Loretta Bird said. | 180 | | But Mrs. Peebles jumped up and caught my arms and shook me."Calm down. Don't get hysterical. Calm down. Stop crying. Listen to me. Listen. I'm wondering, if you know what being intimate means. Now tell me. What did you think it meant?""Kissing," I howled.She let go. "Oh, Edie. Stop it. Don't be silly. It's all right. It's all a misunderstanding. Being intimate means a lot more than that. Oh, I wondered.""She's trying to cover up, now," said Alice Kelling. "Yes. She's not so stupid. She sees she got herself in trouble." | 185 | | "I believe her," Mrs. Peebles said. "This is an awful scene.""Well there is one way to find out," said Alice Kelling, getting up. "After all, I am a nurse."Mrs. Peebles drew a breath and said, "No. No. Go to your room, Edie. And stop that noise. This is too disgusting."I heard the car start in a little while. I tried to stop crying, pulling back each wave as it started over me. Finally, I succeeded, and lay heaving on the bed.Mrs. Peebles came and stood in the doorway. | 190 | | "She's gone," she said. "That Bird woman too. Of course, you know you should never have gone near that man and that is the cause of all this trouble. I have a headache. As soon as you can, go and wash your face in cold water and get at the dishes and we will not say any more about this." | | | Nor we didn't. I didn't figure out till years later the extent of what I had been saved from. Mrs. Peebles was not very friendly to me afterward, but she was fair. Not very friendly is the wrong way of describing what she was. She never had been very friendly. It was just that now she had to see me all the time and it got on her nerves, a little.As for me, I put it all out of my mind like a bad dream and concentrated on waiting for my letter. The mail came every day except Sunday, between one-thirty and two in the afternoon, a good time for me because Mrs. Peebles was always having her nap. I would get the kitchen all cleaned and then go up to the mailbox and sit in the grass, waiting. I was perfectly happy, waiting. I forgot all about Alice Kelling and her misery and awful talk and Mrs. Peebles and her chilliness and the embarrassment of whether she had told Dr. Peebles and the face of Loretta Bird, getting her fill of other people's troubles. I was always smiling when the mailman got there, and continued smiling even after he gave me the mail and I saw today wasn't the day. The mailman was a Carmichael. I knew by his face because there are a lot of Carmichaels living out by us and so many of them have a sort of sticking-out top lip. So I asked his name (he was a young man, shy, but good humored, anybody could ask him anything) and then I said, "I knew by your face!" He was pleased by that and always glad to see me and got a little less shy. "You've got the smile I've been waiting on all day!" he used to holler out the car window.It never crossed my mind for a long time a letter might not come. I believed in it coming just like I believed the sun would rise in the morning. I just put off my hope from day to day, and there was the goldenrod out around the mailbox and the children gone back to school, and the leaves turning, and I was wearing a sweater when I went to wait. One day walking back with the hydro bill stuck in my hand, that was all, looking across at the fairgrounds with the full-blown milkweed and dark teasels, so much like fall, it just struck me: No letter was ever going to come. It was an impossible idea to get used to. No, not impossible. If I thought about Chris's face when he said he was going to write to me, it was impossible, but if I forgot that and thought about the actual tin mailbox, empty, it was plain and true. I kept on going to meet the mail, but my heart was heavy now like a lump of lead. I only smiled because I thought of the mailman counting on it, and he didn't have an easy life, with the winter driving ahead.Till it came to me one day there were women doing this with their lives, all over. There were women just waiting and waiting by mailboxes for one letter or another. I imagined me making this journey day after day and year after year, and my hair starting to get gray, and I thought, I was never made to go on like that. So I stopped meeting the mail. If there were women all through life waiting, and women busy and not waiting, I knew which I had to be. Even though there might be things the second kind of women have to pass up and never know about, it still is better. | | | I was surprised when the mailman phoned the Peebleses' place in the evening and asked for me. He said he missed me. He asked if I would like to go to Goderich, where some well-known movie was on, I forget now what. So I said yes, and I went out with him for two years and he asked me to marry him, and we were engaged a year more while I got my things together, and then we did marry. He always tells the children the story of how I went after him by sitting by the mailbox every day, and naturally I laugh and let him, because I like for people to think what pleases them and makes them happy. | 200 | "How I Met My Husband" by Alice Munro (1974) (7,247 words), fromSomething I've Been Meaning to Tell You by Alice Munro, Random House. | | |
RESPONSE AND REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Exploring Point of View This story is told in the first person by a woman who is looking back at an experience she had as a teenager. What are the strengths and limitations of such a narrator? Edie makes this statement in the opening of the last section of the story: "I didn't figure out till years later the extent of what I had been saved from." What does this statement reveal about her reliability as a narrator, especially in regard to Chris?
Exploring Plot The arrival of Chris and his plane initiates the action, and his appearance at the window while Edie is dressing up in Mrs. Peebles's clothes provides a jolting start to their relationship. What other means does Munro use to advance the plot?
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2.2 How Use of Persona Affects Your Resp…
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2.2 How Use of Persona Affects Your Response to Literature
If there's a nameplate on your desk at work, it's possible for someone who passes by to get a sense of who you are just by looking at your desk, noticing how things are arranged, glancing at the design of your coffee cup, and so on. If these items could speak, the observer could learn a lot more about you, of course. A piece of literature is somewhat like that desk: The author's name is on it, and you can discover things about the author when you read. But there's a difference. Unlike inboxes and coffee cups, the characters in stories and poems and plays can speak. As they do, they may represent what the author thinks, or they may be "speaking for themselves"—representing views that are different from the author's. In other words, it's important to understand an author's use of persona.
Persona in "The Road Not Taken"
In Latin, persona means "mask." When it is used in literature, persona refers to the person who is the narrator in a story or the speaker in a poem. In other words, the main voice in a work of fiction or poetry is usually not the author's voice, although it may reflect the author's views. The main voice comes from the person the author created to narrate or speak. In most cases, this speaker is a character in the story or the poem, but sometimes a persona can be an outside voice, a speaker who is looking at the action but is not part of it.
Look carefully at the student's analysis in the box following Robert Frost's famous poem "The Road Not Taken." The analysis identifies the persona (speaker) as a person who is approaching decision making thoughtfully, but this person is not necessarily Robert Frost.
Also note Frost's use of symbol in the poem. A symbol is an object, person, or action that conveys two meanings: its literal meaning and something it stands for. In "The Road Not Taken," Frost presents the literal image of two roads. But he suggests that they stand for something other than what their literal meaning conveys: They represent (symbolize) life's pathways on which our day-by-day experiences unfold.
Robert Frost (1874–1963)
© Bettmann/CORBIS
Robert Frost was born in San Francisco. At age 11, he moved with his family to New England. He attended both Dartmouth College and Harvard but did not graduate. After an unsuccessful attempt at farming, he and his wife moved to England in 1912. There, with encouragement from poet Ezra Pound, he published his first two collections of poems, A Boy's Will and North of Boston. He returned to the United States in 1915 as a popular poet and was even more celebrated in the years that followed, winning the Pulitzer Prize for his works four times. He was sought after as an artist in residence at universities in New England and wrote candidly about the poetic process. His lyrical style and masterful use of ordinary language and rural settings made his poetry delightful. Building on delight, he engaged in ironic inquiry to give expression to complex ideas and questions that define the human spirit.
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost (1916)
Audio clips are not available in all browsers. To listen to the audio clip, please access in Firefox or Chrome. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth. | 5 | Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;Though as for that the passing thereHad worn them really about the same. | 10 | And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,I doubted if I should ever come back. | 15 | I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference. | 20 | "The Road Not Taken" from the book THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1923, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright © 1951 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Users are warned that this Selection is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the Selection via any medium must be secured from Henry Holt and Company, LLC. | |
SAMPLE RESPONSE AND REFLECTION QUESTIONS
The following questions are reflective of those you will encounter throughout the remainder of this textbook. The sample answers provided are examples of how you might respond to these questions.
Connecting (Imaginative reading)
Q. What allowed you to connect to the poem?
A. I was able to connect to this poem immediately because I'd often heard the title quoted in public speeches. Then, I became interested in seeing if I could figure out why the idea of "the road not taken" is so often mentioned in speeches.
Considering (Analysis)
Q. What do you know about the speaker in this poem?
A. The speaker is a serious, thoughtful person, and could be either a woman or a man. There is no precise indication of the speaker's age, but the last line of the poem suggests that the person is reflective, thinking not just about a present decision but about future consequences as well. Even though stanza 2 suggests the choice could have gone either way—both roads were a lot alike—the speaker chose the one "less traveled by" and is willing to accept whatever the choice will bring, knowing that choosing the other road for future travel is not possible. It is clear, also, that the speaker is reflecting on a choice related to a significant life decision that involves commitment and integrity, and is not merely selecting a road in the woods.
Concluding (Interpretation)
Q. What do the comments "telling this with a sigh" (line 16) and "that has made all the difference" (line 20) reveal about life choices?
A. I've concluded that the poem emphasizes the ambiguity associated with life choices. From what I already knew about the poem, I thought it dealt simply with making a challenging ("less traveled by") choice. However, I now see that it reflects not just on the motive for choosing, but also on the nature of choice making. There appears to be delight, at least satisfaction, on the part of the speaker at the beginning of the poem, but the "sigh" mentioned at the end suggests that the choice was more complex than it appeared: It may have even resulted in personal regret. Consequently, the poem reveals the nature of decision making, implying that, at best, it's a fuzzy process with ambiguous aspects—both at the moment a choice is made and afterwards. In this way, the poem makes a wise observation and explores important life knowledge.
Your Turn
Try using the literary response framework connecting, considering, concluding to explore meaning in Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour." In this brief narrative, there is not a lot of action, but you can gain important insights about the action—and the story's outcome—by paying close attention to what the main character, Mrs. Mallard, is thinking.
Kate Chopin (1850ñ1904)
Missouri History Museum, St. Louis
Chopin was born in St. Louis (her birth name was Katherine O'Flaherty), one of five children—the only one to live beyond age 25. After attending Catholic schools, she married Oscar Chopin, a cotton broker, and moved to New Orleans. When he died 12 years later, she was left to raise their six children. Various journals, including Atlantic Monthly and Vogue, published her short stories. One of her novels, The Awakening, was controversial because it acknowledged a woman's strength in spite of her adulterous life. Chopin's writings expressed her personal quest for freedom and contributed to the rise of feminism.
The Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin (1894) 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 received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken 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.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.There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air. | 5 | Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will—as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion 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 her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers 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. | 10 | And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! 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!"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door—you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door.""Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. | 15 | She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know that there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen himself from the view of his wife.But Richards was too late.When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills. | 20 | This selection is in the public domain. | |
RESPONSE AND REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Connecting (Imaginative reading)
How is your interest in this story immediately established? How does Chopin create suspense?
Considering (Analysis)
Locate details in the story that give you a sense of what Mrs. Mallard's relationship with her hus-band was like. In paragraphs five and six, how does the author's mention of new spring life, twittering sparrows, and patches of blue sky help you understand Mrs. Mallard's feelings—and her hopes?
Concluding (Interpretation)
Mrs. Mallard (in paragraphs eight and nine) is experiencing change. She feels that something is "approaching" her, seeking to "possess her." What do you think she is struggling with? Had she ever loved her husband?
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2.2 How Use of Persona Affects Your Resp…
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2.2 How Use of Persona Affects Your Response to Literature
If there's a nameplate on your desk at work, it's possible for someone who passes by to get a sense of who you are just by looking at your desk, noticing how things are arranged, glancing at the design of your coffee cup, and so on. If these items could speak, the observer could learn a lot more about you, of course. A piece of literature is somewhat like that desk: The author's name is on it, and you can discover things about the author when you read. But there's a difference. Unlike inboxes and coffee cups, the characters in stories and poems and plays can speak. As they do, they may represent what the author thinks, or they may be "speaking for themselves"—representing views that are different from the author's. In other words, it's important to understand an author's use of persona.
Persona in "The Road Not Taken"
In Latin, persona means "mask." When it is used in literature, persona refers to the person who is the narrator in a story or the speaker in a poem. In other words, the main voice in a work of fiction or poetry is usually not the author's voice, although it may reflect the author's views. The main voice comes from the person the author created to narrate or speak. In most cases, this speaker is a character in the story or the poem, but sometimes a persona can be an outside voice, a speaker who is looking at the action but is not part of it.
Look carefully at the student's analysis in the box following Robert Frost's famous poem "The Road Not Taken." The analysis identifies the persona (speaker) as a person who is approaching decision making thoughtfully, but this person is not necessarily Robert Frost.
Also note Frost's use of symbol in the poem. A symbol is an object, person, or action that conveys two meanings: its literal meaning and something it stands for. In "The Road Not Taken," Frost presents the literal image of two roads. But he suggests that they stand for something other than what their literal meaning conveys: They represent (symbolize) life's pathways on which our day-by-day experiences unfold.
Robert Frost (1874–1963)
© Bettmann/CORBIS
Robert Frost was born in San Francisco. At age 11, he moved with his family to New England. He attended both Dartmouth College and Harvard but did not graduate. After an unsuccessful attempt at farming, he and his wife moved to England in 1912. There, with encouragement from poet Ezra Pound, he published his first two collections of poems, A Boy's Will and North of Boston. He returned to the United States in 1915 as a popular poet and was even more celebrated in the years that followed, winning the Pulitzer Prize for his works four times. He was sought after as an artist in residence at universities in New England and wrote candidly about the poetic process. His lyrical style and masterful use of ordinary language and rural settings made his poetry delightful. Building on delight, he engaged in ironic inquiry to give expression to complex ideas and questions that define the human spirit.
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost (1916)
Audio clips are not available in all browsers. To listen to the audio clip, please access in Firefox or Chrome. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth. | 5 | Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;Though as for that the passing thereHad worn them really about the same. | 10 | And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,I doubted if I should ever come back. | 15 | I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference. | 20 | "The Road Not Taken" from the book THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1923, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright © 1951 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Users are warned that this Selection is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the Selection via any medium must be secured from Henry Holt and Company, LLC. | |
SAMPLE RESPONSE AND REFLECTION QUESTIONS
The following questions are reflective of those you will encounter throughout the remainder of this textbook. The sample answers provided are examples of how you might respond to these questions.
Connecting (Imaginative reading)
Q. What allowed you to connect to the poem?
A. I was able to connect to this poem immediately because I'd often heard the title quoted in public speeches. Then, I became interested in seeing if I could figure out why the idea of "the road not taken" is so often mentioned in speeches.
Considering (Analysis)
Q. What do you know about the speaker in this poem?
A. The speaker is a serious, thoughtful person, and could be either a woman or a man. There is no precise indication of the speaker's age, but the last line of the poem suggests that the person is reflective, thinking not just about a present decision but about future consequences as well. Even though stanza 2 suggests the choice could have gone either way—both roads were a lot alike—the speaker chose the one "less traveled by" and is willing to accept whatever the choice will bring, knowing that choosing the other road for future travel is not possible. It is clear, also, that the speaker is reflecting on a choice related to a significant life decision that involves commitment and integrity, and is not merely selecting a road in the woods.
Concluding (Interpretation)
Q. What do the comments "telling this with a sigh" (line 16) and "that has made all the difference" (line 20) reveal about life choices?
A. I've concluded that the poem emphasizes the ambiguity associated with life choices. From what I already knew about the poem, I thought it dealt simply with making a challenging ("less traveled by") choice. However, I now see that it reflects not just on the motive for choosing, but also on the nature of choice making. There appears to be delight, at least satisfaction, on the part of the speaker at the beginning of the poem, but the "sigh" mentioned at the end suggests that the choice was more complex than it appeared: It may have even resulted in personal regret. Consequently, the poem reveals the nature of decision making, implying that, at best, it's a fuzzy process with ambiguous aspects—both at the moment a choice is made and afterwards. In this way, the poem makes a wise observation and explores important life knowledge.
Your Turn
Try using the literary response framework connecting, considering, concluding to explore meaning in Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour." In this brief narrative, there is not a lot of action, but you can gain important insights about the action—and the story's outcome—by paying close attention to what the main character, Mrs. Mallard, is thinking.
Kate Chopin (1850ñ1904)
Missouri History Museum, St. Louis
Chopin was born in St. Louis (her birth name was Katherine O'Flaherty), one of five children—the only one to live beyond age 25. After attending Catholic schools, she married Oscar Chopin, a cotton broker, and moved to New Orleans. When he died 12 years later, she was left to raise their six children. Various journals, including Atlantic Monthly and Vogue, published her short stories. One of her novels, The Awakening, was controversial because it acknowledged a woman's strength in spite of her adulterous life. Chopin's writings expressed her personal quest for freedom and contributed to the rise of feminism.
The Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin (1894) 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 received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken 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.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.There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air. | 5 | Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will—as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion 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 her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers 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. | 10 | And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! 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!"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door—you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door.""Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. | 15 | She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know that there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen himself from the view of his wife.But Richards was too late.When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills. | 20 | This selection is in the public domain. | |
RESPONSE AND REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Connecting (Imaginative reading)
How is your interest in this story immediately established? How does Chopin create suspense?
Considering (Analysis)
Locate details in the story that give you a sense of what Mrs. Mallard's relationship with her hus-band was like. In paragraphs five and six, how does the author's mention of new spring life, twittering sparrows, and patches of blue sky help you understand Mrs. Mallard's feelings—and her hopes?
Concluding (Interpretation)
Mrs. Mallard (in paragraphs eight and nine) is experiencing change. She feels that something is "approaching" her, seeking to "possess her." What do you think she is struggling with? Had she ever loved her husband?
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