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The Count of Monte Cristo

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How many times could anybody possibly hear in a lifetime the phrase that love gives wings and teaches to fly? Yet, often this phrase is misleading; love may be great, but it also may imprison a person and break the spirit. “ A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones.” (Psalms proverbs). Love, especially in marriage, does not often last forever even though this institution may insist that it does. In her short story “The Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin expresses the feelings of a woman in a marriage in the 19th century and the vacillations of thought and feeling that a marriage brought a particular woman, Mrs. Mallard, at that time. Through plot, character and irony the author demonstrates that Mrs. Mallard is not the ideally happily married women, of her time or any other time. Mrs. Mallard wishes freedom of thought and expression and this is not available to a woman in her married position.
The story begins with the announcement of the death of Mr. Mallard. After she hears of his death, his wife goes upstairs alone to her room to grieve. Yet she does not grieve; instead, she feels relief. A woman in her position has been married her whole life and has gone from father’s possession to husband’s possession. “She said it over and over under her breath: ‘free, free, free!’” (197). She understands that this is not what she is supposed to feel, yet she cannot help but feel it at the bottom of her soul. She realizes that she loved her husband, but she also realizes that she was imprisoned by their love and marriage. “And yet she had loved him sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in fact of this possession of self assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being! ‘Free! Body and soul free!’

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