Perspectival Strategies in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”

Abstract

The essay focuses on the interplay between the authorial narrative instance and the internally focalized perspective that structures the internal movement of one of Kate Chopin’s most famous texts, “The Story of an Hour” (1894). Chopin’s perspectival choices offer a key to reflect upon the issue at the center of Chopin’s short story, namely, women’s freedom in a patriarchal society. The discrepancy between what the characters know and what readers know triggers a potentially ambivalent ethical and affective engagement which mirrors Chopin’s own positioning.