A Close Reading of Edith L. Tiempo's "Bonsai"

Bonsai

All that I love

I fold over once

And once again

And keep in a box

Or a slit in a hollow post

Or in my shoe.

All that I love?

Why, yes, but for the moment ---

And for all time, both.

Something that folds and keeps easy,

Son’s note or Dad’s one gaudy tie,

A roto picture of a young queen,

A blue Indian shawl, even

A money bill.

It’s utter sublimation

A feat, this heart’s control

Moment to moment

To scale all love down

To a cupped hand’s size,

Till seashells are broken pieces

From God’s own bright teeth.

And life and love are real

Things you can run and

Breathless hand over

To the merest child.

- Edith L. Tiempo

* * *

A first reading of Edith L. Tiempo’s signature poem is a tad confounding, for

the first lady of Philippine poetry in English deploys the centripetal-

centrifugal-centripetal (or inward-outward-inward) motion in expressing her

profoundest thoughts and deepest feelings about love. The title itself,

“Bonsai,” is a bit misleading, since nowhere else in the poem are there any

further references to plant life or the ancient Japanese technique of

cultivating miniature trees or shrubs through dwarfing by selective pruning.

Some might even argue that “Origami” is the better title choice, for at least

the persona’s act of folding objects is a bit analogous to the Japanese art of

paper folding to make complicated shapes. But this reader will prove at the

end of this essay that “Bonsai” is the most appropriate title for the poem,

something that is not quite obvious to most people after their perfunctory

appraisal of this often misread literary masterpiece.

However, despite the false lead, even a cursory perusal of the poem reveals

to the sensitive and sensible reader that “Bonsai” is about love, if only

because the four-letter word is mentioned in all four stanzas. In the first

stanza, the persona declares that she folds everything that she loves and

keeps them hidden in secret places: “a box,/ Or a slit in a hollow post,/ Or in

my shoe.//” What then are the things she considers imperative enough to

keep? 

At first glance, the catalogue of her beloved objects in the second stanza

appears to be disparate, unrelated, almost random, if not completely

aleatory. But since a literary sorceress like Tiempo seldom commits mistakes

in conjuring appropriate images, then there must a be reason for singling out

these particular items and not others. The more important query therefore is

this: What do “Son’s note or Dad’s one gaudy tie,/ A roto[i] picture of a

young queen,/ A blue Indian shawl, even/ A money bill.//” share in common?

Besides being foldable and thus easy to keep, they must symbolize for the

loving female persona important individuals and incidents in her life. For as

the semiotician Roland Barthes correctly observes in A Lover’s Discourse:

“Every object touched by the loved being’s body becomes part of that body,

and the subject eagerly attaches himself to it.”[ii]

If we are to assume that the speaking voice of “Bonsai” closely resembles

the poet’s own, then the first three objects must represent members of her

immediate family: son Maldon; husband Edilberto (It is a well-known fact

among writing fellows and panelists of the Silliman Writers’ Workshop that

Edith fondly called the late fictionist and literary critic “Dad,” while being

addressed by her husband as “Mom,” which is a common practice among

Filipino couples.); and daughter Rowena (Unknown to many, the current

Program Administrator of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop is a former winner of

the Miss Negros Oriental beauty contest sometime in the 1970s, another

indicator of the Filipino flavor of the poem, since the Philippines is a pageant-

obsessed Third World country.). 

The referents of the last two items are more covert and thereby more

difficult to decipher. At best, we can only speculate on the persons and/or

events that make the two things significant: blue Indian shawl (Edith’s

engagement date with Edilberto, her first winter in Iowa, her last autumn in

Denver?); money bill (Her initial salary from Silliman University, cash prize

from the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature?).

In the long run though the indeterminacy of the allusions does not really

matter, for the opaqueness of the symbols leads not to generic obscurity and

obfuscation, but to personal mythology and mystery. Perhaps part of the

poem’s message is that the things a person considers memorable and

therefore valuable most other people might think of as debris, detritus or

dirt. (Note that the adverb “even” modifying “money bill” is used to indicate

something unexpected or unusual, which in the context of the poem seems

to suggest that a money bill is not a conventional object to collect and

treasure even by the most sentimental of persons.) Suffice it to say that all

five objects, which are outwardly ordinary and nondescript, acquire

associative significations because they serve for the poetic persona as

conduits of recall, like mementoes, souvenirs and keepsakes.

Interestingly, the second stanza commences with what appears to be a

rhetorical question (“All that I love?”), which the persona answers with a

paradox: “Why, yes, but for the moment ---/ And for all time, both.” The

significance of these seemingly self- contradictory lines will be discussed

towards the end of this essay, but for now this reader will focus on the fact

that the persona pauses to contemplate on the germane issue of the scope

of her love, before she proceeds to enumerate her loved ones’ memorabilia

that she has decided to vouchsafe. Love for the female persona therefore is

a conscious choice, a cognitive act not only an affective one, a motif that

recurs in various degrees in most of her other love poems. 

In the third stanza, the persona explains the rationale behind her action:

It’s utter sublimation

A feat, this heart’s control

Moment to moment

To scale all love down

To a cupped hand’s size,

The keyword here is sublimation, which in psychology is the deflection of

sexual energy or other atavistic biological impulse from its immediate goal to

one of a higher social, moral or aesthetic nature or use. In chemistry, on the

other hand, sublimation is the process of transforming a solid substance by

heat into a vapor, which on cooling condenses again to solid form without

apparent liquefaction. Inherent in both definitions is the act of refinement

and purification through fire, since to sublimate in a sense is to make

something sublime out of something sordid. In the latter a literal fire

dissolves through a crucible the dross from the precious metal, while in the

former it is furnace of the mind that burns away the superfluous from the

crucial experiences. 

The second most important idea in this stanza is the procedure of scaling

love down, which Tiempo asserts is a feat by itself, an exceptional

accomplishment of the female persona’s sentimental heart which is achieved

through utmost discipline and restraint. But aside from mere manageability,

why is it necessary to miniaturize love, to whittle it down to the size of “a

cupped hand”? 

The answer to this pertinent question is given, albeit in a tangential fashion,

in the fourth and last stanza: “And life and love are real/ Things you can run

and/ Breathless hand over/ To the merest child.” Love as “real things” or

concrete objects rather than as abstract concepts is easier to pass on, since

it has become more tangible and thus more comprehensible to most

everyone else, including children and one’s beloved offspring. It also

underscores the importance of bequeathing the legacy of love to the next

generation, since as the cliché goes “children are the future of the world,”

which makes “the merest child,” and not the wisest woman nor the strongest

man, the ideal recipient of such a wonderful gift. The image of the cupped

hand also emphasizes the idea that in the act of giving the one offering the

bequest is also a beggar of sorts, since the beneficiary can always refuse to

accept the heirlooms being proffered. 

But another important element is introduced in the ultimate stanza, for the

persona by some extraordinary leap of the imagination perceives the

seashells on the beach as “broken pieces/ From God’s own bright teeth,”

which for a better understanding of “Bonsai” must be elaborated on, so that

readers of Philippine poetry from English can fully appreciate the tight

structural organization of the poem. Gémino H. Abad in his remarkable essay

“Mapping Our Poetic Terrain: Filipino Poetry in English from 1905 to the

Present”[iii]connects this image to the paradoxical lines of the second stanza

“for the moment ---/ And for all time, both.” This reader cannot help but

agree, since indeed the five objects mentioned by the persona being

mementoes of the people she loves are metonyms of memory, shattered but

shimmering fragments of chronology, captured important moments

immortalized in the heart and mind, if we are to visualize Time itself as a

manifestation of God. 

Of greater consequence, thought, is that this divine figure completes

Tiempo’s poetic picture about love and remembrance by adding the spiritual

detail, for love like the unmentionable Hebrew name of the Almighty is also a

Tetragrammaton, a four-letter word, which has probably engendered the

often-quoted adage that “God is Love, and Love is God.” Structurally

speaking, her most famous poem can thus be diagrammed in this manner:

TREE/SHRUB ------- bonsai

LOVE ------------- son’s note, Dad's one gaudy tie, etc. 

GOD -------------- seashells

MAN/WOMAN -------- merest child

On the left side of the chart are the huge objects, concepts or people: full-

size flora (Tree/Shrub), big abstract words (Love, God) and grownups

(Man/Woman). Their miniature analogues, in contrast, are found on the right

side of the chart. However, these diminutive parallels, especially the

mementoes, retain the spirit of their larger versions, since the process of

sublimation reduces things only in terms of size but not in essence.

Ultimately, this makes “Bonsai” the perfect title of the poem, for a bonsai

has all the necessary parts that make a tree or a shrub what it is: roots, a

trunk, branches, leaves and flowers, albeit in smaller portions; in the same

manner that love even if sublimated by the heart and the mind still

preserves its sum and substance, its lifeblood in the truest sense of the

written word and the word made flesh. 

Notes:

[i] Short for rotogravure: a photomechanical process by which pictures,

typeset matter, etc., are printed from an intaglio copper cylinder to the

pages of a newspaper, usually the magazine section.

[ii] Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, Hill and Wong, New

York, 1978, p. 173.

[iii] See Gémino H. Abad's introductory essay in The Likhaan Anthology of

Philippine Literature in English, University of the Philippines Press, Quezon

City, 1998.

An Analysis of Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe

I discussed the poem Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe with my seventh grade classes, and we had lively

discussions about it. The conventional–and typical–interpretation of this poem is that it is a love poem

inspired by Poe’s dead wife. My interpretation is different, however. I’ve tried to find another

interpretation like mine, and failing, have decided to explain what I think.

Firstly, I want to point out that I am not going to write this as a research paper. I will have no sources

other than the poem itself and my own thoughts. Additionally, I begin with the knowledge that Poe

composed the poem after his wife’s death. Any specifics about his or her age, cause of death, etcetera,

will not come into this explanation because I do not believe them relevant.

One of the most challenging features of Annabel Lee is something that I’ve intuited but never felt the

need to articulate, namely:

A fiction writer is understood to take up the role of a narrator, which may differ from his or her own

perspective. A poet, on the other hand, is presumed to simply be revealing his or her own biographical

feelings in the poem. In short, a poem like Annabel Lee is doubly challenging because it contains both a

fictional narrative and a fictional narrator.

Since Annabel Lee is in the public domain, I can begin with the text of the poem itself. Note that Poe

actually indents the even lines of his poem, but WordPress enjoys stripping any spaces from the code, and

I’m not willing to try to spend hours trying to figure out how to force it to add three extra spaces to every

other line of this poem.

Annabel Lee

By Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

I want to take an alternate viewpoint of this poem and examine it from the premise that Poe was using an

unreliable narrator. From this point on, when I refer to the poet, I will be referring to the fictional

character who is recounting the events of the poem, not Edgar Allan Poe. I will refer to Poe by name

when I mean Poe the craftsman who created this poem.

If the poet is unreliable, deciphering which pieces of the poem are factual, and which pieces are

interpretations based on the poet’s flawed perspective is a balancing act. The unreliable narrator has a

distorted perception of reality, and through that distortion, the reader must interpret what is real and what

the poet believes.

The poem Annabel Lee gradually reveals stanza by stanza that the poet is not sane. Within each stanza the

poet explains more of his distorted reality, allowing the reader to decipher that the madness was present

all along. At the poem’s conclusion, the reader can look back over the poem to see that all of the

unreliable hints left by the mad poet.

S T A N Z A O N E

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

The poet begins the poem with “It was many and many a year ago,” which is a close approximation of

“Once upon a time,” or even, “A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away…” This prepares the reader

for Never Never Land, a comparable fairy tale landscape, or the green, green grass of the past.

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

He describes Annabel Lee as a “maiden,” which is, by definition, a young girl, especially unmarried, or a

virgin. That he does call her a maiden indicates that their relationship had not progressed to marriage, or

he would likely have introduced her as his “wife.”

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

The poet also explains that the maiden, “lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me.”

Since it is the poet who makes this declaration (and not the maiden; we don’t discover until Stanza Three

why the maiden can’t speak for herself), there are two conclusions we can draw from his statement:

The maiden really did live “with no other thought that to love and be loved by” the poet;

The maiden did not have these thoughts, but the poet believed that she did.

Stanza One is the beginning of the poem, and the reader has not had enough exposure to the poet to

evaluate his reliability. Readers who assume that the poet is recounting his own true feelings or

experiences in the poem will not doubt that the poet is honestly portraying the state of affairs. In contrast,

readers who begin to question the reliability of the poet after reading the remainder of the poem must

question the accuracy of his assertions.

S T A N Z A T W O

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

The couplets introduce these concepts:

1. The poet and Annabel Lee were children in this once upon a time place;

2. the poet and Annabel Lee “loved with a love that was more than love”;

3. this love was so amazingly great that the angels in heaven were jealous of the lovers.

Most people read that the poet and Annabel Lee “loved with a love that was more than love” and assume

simply that this line is hyperbole, or an exaggeration of the love the two shared. They do not even

question the poet’s assertion, seemingly taking it for granted that a thing (or concept) can be greater than

the thing (or concept) itself. But something by definition cannotbe greater than itself. The formula 1 > 1

results in a logical error.

Add to this the very abstract and ultimately unknowable statement uttered in lines 11-12, when the poet

declares that the angels of heaven are jealous of the love shared between Annabel Lee and the narrator.

Such an assertion can be interpreted as either fact or opinion, as in:

The poet has knowledge of the heavens that gives him access to the motivations of divine beings.

The poet’s opinion is that the angels of heaven were jealous of the love shared by the lovers.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and point out that my experience in life has left me slightly ignorant of

the sublime. Indeed, most people I know (and even the most religious among them) are equally ignorant

of the sublime. Therefore, the first point can be discounted.

This leaves us with the interpretation that the poet was expressing an opinion when he declared that the

angels were jealous. Since people vary in the way they deal with grief, it is not unlikely to assume that the

poet has decided to pin the blame for his love’s loss on the divine instruments, God’s angels. What has

driven the poet to angels is unclear, especially since he may as well go all the way to the big guy. After

all, God is the one who directs the angels much like a toddler with his toy cars. Indeed, by focusing his

attention on the angels, he’s giving God a pass, and this purposeful omission appears to be the poet’s way

to blame God without blaming God.

S T A N Z A T H R E E

Within this stanza the poet adds two pieces of information to his tale. First, he reinforces the angels’

culpability by saying, “This is the reason” though he doesn’t yet acknowledge the angels as divine

hitmen:

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee;

Second, the “highborn kinsmen” of Annabel Lee take her away and shut her up in a sepulchre by the sea:

So that her highborn kinsmen came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

In this kingdom by the sea.

Probably the most telling element of this stanza is that the poet reveals through his explanation that he is

not in any way responsible for Annabel Lee’s body. Her kinsmen are. This supports his earlier statement

of Annabel Lee as a maiden. She is a minor, then, a dependent whose elders take care of her after her

death. Keep in mind that his reliability is questionable, so the behavior of others in this case supports the

statement that she was a maiden, and we can accept it now more readily.

S T A N Z A F O U R

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

The poet’s accusation that the angels are divine hitman incapable of accepting such pure love on earth is a

restatement of his assertion from Stanza Three; however, in Stanza four he goes further by attempting to

legitimize this accusation when he explains that since everyone knows it, it must be so. I’ve already

explained my doubts about the poet’s access to sublime knowledge; I’m equally suspicious about his

access to the knowledge of his fellow men, which means his “as all men know” argument is equally

faulty. I interpret this as self-deception: he has convinced himself that angels killed Annabel Lee and tells

himself that “all men know” this to be the case. We don’t have “all men” to substantiate the poet’s

declaration; instead, we have the poet who is increasingly unreliable.

The cause of Annabel Lee’s death, according to the poet, is that “the wind came out of the cloud by night,

/ Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.” What makes this line interesting is that it could be the most

truthful line in the entire poem. Annabel Lee could have died from exposure to cold air; she could have

developed pneumonia; there are probably many possible methods of dying from exposure. What is telling

about the poet is that he then takes this cold air killer and connects it with the divine, identifying it as the

will of angels who seek to end Annabel’s life.

S T A N Z A F I V E

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we—

Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

The poet reveals his strong love, far stronger than the love experienced by others, which is why it can’t be

split by either angels or demons.

It is a misapprehension of either innocence or madness to assume that what you yourself experience

differs from every other person who has ever existed. It’s the perennial teenage argument, “You just don’t

understand,” when the reality is that it is the teenager who just doesn’t understand, who speaks from

ignorance and assumes everyone else is not equally ignorant, but more ignorant.

One part of aging is to get past the egocentric assumption that the rest of the world cannot connect to your

experiences. The poet has never passed to true maturity, since the loss of Annabel Lee has left him

emotionally crippled at the same level of emotional maturity as he was when he lost her. After all, the

poet introduces the poem with the line, “It was many and many a year ago.” Meanwhile, he remains (all

these years later) as certain as ever that no one can appreciate his lost love, that no one can understand,

because no one has ever experienced such a loss.

S T A N Z A S I X

The final stanza of Annabel Lee is a knock-out. But Poe doesn’t just put it in one solid jab; he throws a

rapid right-left combo before the main thrust. Observe:

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

We accept this as believable. Certainly a lost love will visit her lover’s dreams as he mourns her death.

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

The creep factor should have set in with the words, “I feel the bright eyes.” I recognize only two possible

interpretations for this line:

The poet is reaching out with his own fingertips to “feel the bright eyes / Of the beautiful Annabel

Lee”; or

The poet can “feel” the admittedly dead Annabel Lee looking at him. This is the more likely of the

two, since it indicates that the poet feels a connection to the dead Annabel Lee as she observes him

despite the gulf between the two.

Here’s the final punch:

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In her sepulchre there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

The poet reveals that he spends his nights within his dead love’s tomb at the side of her body. Poe waits,

has the poet hold off on this admission until the conclusion of the poem because he wants his reader to

look back over the rest of the poem and see it anew, see it in the light of a narrator willing to lay inside a

sepulchre beside a dead body near the ocean. All previous stanzas are skewed after the poet admits he

sleeps beside Annabel Lee even after her death.

I N C O N C L U S I O N

I believe Poe was really trying to create a disturbing poem that reveals gradually that the poet was

unreliable and obsessed with a woman who may not have returned his love. The basic unreliability of the

poet revealed in hints throughout the poem means that even as the poet claims Annabel Lee is his “bride,”

a reader may not be able to believe that she was anything more than an obsession. We’ve all heard stories

of Hollywood starlets beset by obsessive stalkers who need restraining orders; these maniacal lovers fill

notebooks with fantasies, and live with the belief that the two are meant to be together for all time. I think

Poe wanted to capture this monomania when he wrote Annabel Lee, portraying a creepy stalker willing to

sneak into his dead love’s crypt because of his certainty that she wants to be with him even in death.

"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 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.

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.

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 hte 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 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.

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 keyhold,

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.

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 there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at

Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy

that kills. 

 

 

THE STORY OF AN HOURKate Chopin

Context

Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1850, one of five children but

the only one to live through her twenties. Her father, Thomas O’Flaherty,

died when she was five, and she spent her childhood among women: her

mother, Eliza; grandmother; great-grandmother; and the nuns who ran her

school. In 1870, Chopin married Oscar Chopin and moved with him to New

Orleans, where they had six children.

Chopin was an independent spirit who smoked cigarettes, walked alone

through the city, and argued passionately with others about politics and

social problems, much to the dismay of the other New Orleans housewives in

her social circle. Not long after the family moved to Cloutierville, Louisiana,

Oscar died unexpectedly. Chopin mourned his death deeply but eventually

embraced her independence, even going so far as to having an affair with a

married man. Chopin soon returned to St. Louis, where she would spend the

rest of her life.

Chopin began writing fiction in 1889. She wrote about life and people in

Louisiana and focused her attention on love, sex, marriage, women, and

independence. She published her first novel, At Fault, in 1890, when she was

forty. The novel was well received, and she went on to publish short stories

and essays addressing similar topics. She published two collections of short

stories, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Arcadie (1897), and became known

as a writer with a keen eye for local culture. “The Story of an Hour” was

published in 1894 and, along with “The Storm” (1898), is among Chopin’s

most famous stories. Although Chopin’s female protagonists act in

unconventional, even scandalous, ways, readers accepted this as simply part

of the storytelling and didn’t suspect Chopin of moralizing or trying to insert

her personal opinions into her work.

In 1899, Chopin published her second novel, The Awakening. The novel,

which chronicles a married woman’s adulterous affair, shocked readers.

Chopin had allowed her support of women’s independence and sexual

freedom to shine through, which proved to be unacceptable. The publication

of this novel marked the beginning of the end of Chopin’s writing career, and

the novel soon fell out of print, remaining undiscovered until the 1950s.

Today, Chopin is known for addressing feminist issues many years before the

feminist movement became a major social and political force in America.

When Chopin was writing, the feminist movement had barely begun, and in

Louisiana, women were still considered to be their husbands’ lawful property.

As a result, Chopin’s brazen, sensual, independent protagonists were years

ahead of their time. “The Story of an Hour” reflects Chopin’s view of the

repressive role that marriage played in women’s lives as the protagonist,

Louise Mallard, feels immense freedom only when her husband has died.

While he is alive, she must live for him, and only when he dies does her life

once again become her own.

Chopin died of a brain hemorrhage in 1904. She was fifty-two.

Plot Overview

Louise Mallard has heart trouble, so she must be informed carefully about

her husband’s death. Her sister, Josephine, tells her the news. Louise’s

husband’s friend, Richards, learned about a railroad disaster when he was in

the newspaper office and saw Louise’s husband, Brently, on the list of those

killed. Louise begins sobbing when Josephine tells her of Brently’s death and

goes upstairs to be alone in her room.

Louise sits down and looks out an open window. She sees trees, smells

approaching rain, and hears a peddler yelling out what he’s selling. She

hears someone singing as well as the sounds of sparrows, and there are

fluffy white clouds in the sky. She is young, with lines around her eyes. Still

crying, she gazes into the distance. She feels apprehensive and tries to

suppress the building emotions within her, but can’t. She begins repeating

the word Free! to herself over and over again. Her heart beats quickly, and

she feels very warm.

Louise knows she’ll cry again when she sees Brently’s corpse. His hands

were tender, and he always looked at her lovingly. But then she imagines the

years ahead, which belong only to her now, and spreads her arms out

joyfully with anticipation. She will be free, on her own without anyone to

oppress her. She thinks that all women and men oppress one another even if

they do it out of kindness. Louise knows that she often felt love for Brently

but tells herself that none of that matters anymore. She feels ecstatic with

her newfound sense of independence.

Josephine comes to her door, begging Louise to come out, warning her that

she’ll get sick if she doesn’t. Louise tells her to go away. She fantasizes

about all the days and years ahead and hopes that she lives a long life. Then

she opens the door, and she and Josephine start walking down the stairs,

where Richards is waiting.

The front door unexpectedly opens, and Brently comes in. He hadn’t been in

the train accident or even aware that one had happened. Josephine screams,

and Richards tries unsuccessfully to block Louise from seeing him. Doctors

arrive and pronounce that Louise died of a heart attack brought on by

happiness.

Character List

Louise Mallard -  A woman whose husband is reportedly killed in a train

accident. When Louise hears the news, she is secretly happy because she is

now free. She is filled with a new lust for life, and although she usually loved

her husband, she cherishes her newfound independence even more. She has

a heart attack when her husband, alive after all, comes home.

Brently Mallard -  Louise’s husband, supposedly killed in a train accident.

Although Louise remembers Brently as a kind and loving man, merely being

married to him also made him an oppressive factor in her life. Brently arrives

home unaware that there had been a train accident.

Josephine -  Louise’s sister. Josephine informs Louise about Brently’s death.

Richards -  Brently’s friend. Richards learns about the train accident and

Brently’s death at the newspaper office, and he is there when Josephine tells

the news to Louise.

Analysis of Major Characters

Louise Mallard

An intelligent, independent woman, Louise Mallard understands the “right”

way for women to behave, but her internal thoughts and feelings are

anything but correct. When her sister announces that Brently has died,

Louise cries dramatically rather than feeling numb, as she knows many other

women would. Her violent reaction immediately shows that she is an

emotional, demonstrative woman. She knows that she should grieve for

Brently and fear for her own future, but instead she feels elation at her

newfound independence. Louise is not cruel and knows that she’ll cry over

Brently’s dead body when the time comes. But when she is out of others’

sight, her private thoughts are of her own life and the opportunities that

await her, which she feels have just brightened considerably.

 

Louise suffers from a heart problem, which indicates the extent to which she

feels that marriage has oppressed her. The vague label Chopin gives to

Louise’s problem—“heart trouble”—suggests that this trouble is both

physical and emotional, a problem both within her body and with her

relationship to Brently. In the hour during which Louise believes Brently is

dead, her heart beats strongly—indeed, Louise feels her new independence

physically. Alone in her room, her heart races, and her whole body feels

warm. She spreads her arms open, symbolically welcoming her new life.

“Body and soul free!” she repeats to herself, a statement that shows how

total her new independence really is for her. Only when Brently walks in does

her “heart trouble” reappear, and this trouble is so acute that it kills her. The

irony of the ending is that Louise doesn’t die of joy as the doctors claim but

actually from the loss of joy. Brently’s death gave her a glimpse of a new life,

and when that new life is swiftly taken away, the shock and disappointment

kill her.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Themes

The Forbidden Joy of Independence

In “The Story of an Hour,” independence is a forbidden pleasure that can be

imagined only privately. When Louise hears from Josephine and Richards of

Brently’s death, she reacts with obvious grief, and although her reaction is

perhaps more violent than other women’s, it is an appropriate one. Alone,

however, Louise begins to realize that she is now an independent woman, a

realization that enlivens and excites her. Even though these are her private

thoughts, she at first tries to squelch the joy she feels, to “beat it back with

her will.” Such resistance reveals how forbidden this pleasure really is. When

she finally does acknowledge the joy, she feels possessed by it and must

abandon herself to it as the word free escapes her lips. Louise’s life offers no

refuge for this kind of joy, and the rest of society will never accept it or

understand it. Extreme circumstances have given Louise a taste of this

forbidden fruit, and her thoughts are, in turn, extreme. She sees her life as

being absolutely hers and her new independence as the core of her being.

Overwhelmed, Louise even turns to prayer, hoping for a long life in which to

enjoy this feeling. When Brently returns, he unwittingly yanks Louise’s

independence away from her, putting it once again out of her reach. The

forbidden joy disappears as quickly as it came, but the taste of it is enough

to kill her.

The Inherent Oppressiveness of Marriage

Chopin suggests that all marriages, even the kindest ones, are inherently

oppressive. Louise, who readily admits that her husband was kind and loving,

nonetheless feels joy when she believes that he has died. Her reaction

doesn’t suggest any malice, and Louise knows that she’ll cry at Brently’s

funeral. However, despite the love between husband and wife, Louise views

Brently’s death as a release from oppression. She never names a specific

way in which Brently oppressed her, hinting instead that marriage in general

stifles both women and men. She even seems to suggest that she oppressed

Brently just as much as he oppressed her. Louise’s epiphany in which these

thoughts parade through her mind reveals the inherent oppressiveness of all

marriages, which by their nature rob people of their independence.

Motifs

Weeping

Louise’s weeping about Brently’s death highlight the dichotomy between

sorrow and happiness. Louise cries or thinks about crying for about three-

quarters of “The Story of an Hour,” stopping only when she thinks of her new

freedom. Crying is part of her life with Brently, but it will presumably be

absent from her life as an independent woman. At the beginning of the story,

Louise sobs dramatically when she learns that Brently is dead, enduring a

“storm of grief.” She continues weeping when she is alone in her room,

although the crying now is unconscious, more a physical reflex than anything

spurred by emotion. She imagines herself crying over Brently’s dead body.

Once the funeral is over in her fantasies, however, there is no further

mention of crying because she’s consumed with happiness.

Symbols

Heart Trouble

The heart trouble that afflicts Louise is both a physical and symbolic malady

that represents her ambivalence toward her marriage and unhappiness with

her lack of freedom. The fact that Louise has heart trouble is the first thing

we learn about her, and this heart trouble is what seems to make the

announcement of Brently’s death so threatening. A person with a weak

heart, after all, would not deal well with such news. When Louise reflects on

her new independence, her heart races, pumping blood through her veins.

When she dies at the end of the story, the diagnosis of “heart disease”

seems appropriate because the shock of seeing Brently was surely enough to

kill her. But the doctors’ conclusion that she’d died of overwhelming joy is

ironic because it had been the loss of joy that had actually killed her. Indeed,

Louise seems to have died of a broken heart, caused by the sudden loss of

her much-loved independence.

The Open Window

The open window from which Louise gazes for much of the story represents

the freedom and opportunities that await her after her husband has died.

From the window, Louise sees blue sky, fluffy clouds, and treetops. She hears

people and birds singing and smells a coming rainstorm. Everything that she

experiences through her senses suggests joy and spring—new life. And when

she ponders the sky, she feels the first hints of elation. Once she fully

indulges in this excitement, she feels that the open window is providing her

with life itself. The open window provides a clear, bright view into the

distance and Louise’s own bright future, which is now unobstructed by the

demands of another person. It’s therefore no coincidence that when Louise

turns from the window and the view, she quickly loses her freedom as well.

Structure and Style

In “The Story of an Hour,” Chopin employs specific structural and stylistic

techniques to heighten the drama of the hour. The structure Chopin has

chosen for “The Story of an Hour” fits the subject matter perfectly. The story

is short, made up of a series of short paragraphs, many of which consist of

just two or three sentences. Likewise, the story covers only one hour in

Louise Mallard’s life—from the moment she learns of her husband’s death to

the moment he unexpectedly returns alive. The short, dense structure

mirrors the intense hour Louise spends contemplating her new

independence. Just as Louise is completely immersed in her wild thoughts of

the moment, we are immersed along with her in this brief period of time.

This story can be read quickly, but the impact it makes is powerful. Chopin

surprises us first with Louise’s elated reaction when she first murmurs “free”

to herself. She shocks us again at the conclusion when she dies upon

Brently’s return. The “heart disease” mentioned at the end of the story

echoes the “heart trouble” discussed at the beginning, intensifying the twist

ending and bringing the story to a satisfying close.

 

Because such a short story leaves no room for background information,

flashbacks, or excessive speculation, Chopin succeeds in making every

sentence important by employing an almost poetic writing style. She uses

repetition to highlight important points, such as when she repeats the

word open throughout the story to emphasize the freedom of Louise’s new

life. She has Louise repeat the word free over and over again as well, which

is one of the few words Louise actually speaks aloud in the story and

indicates how much she cherishes her newfound freedom. Besides repeating

words, Chopin also repeats phrases and sentence structures to highlight

important points. For example, Chopin writes, “She breathed a quick prayer

that life might be long. It was only yesterday that she had thought with a

shudder that life might be long.” The identical phrasing of the second half of

each sentence reveals how drastically Louise’s life has changed—she once

shuddered at the thought of a long life, but now she prays for it. Finally,

Chopin makes the prose of the story beautiful by using alliteration and

internal rhymes. For example, Josephine “revealed in half concealing” when

she tells Louise the news, and Brently reappears “composedly carrying” his

belongings. All of Chopin’s stylistic and structural techniques combine to

make this very short story powerful.

Important Quotations Explained

1. 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. 

This quotation appears after Louise has gone alone to her room to deal with

the news of Brently’s death. After an initial fit of tears, Louise looks out her

window at the wide-open spaces below. This quotation is our first hint that

Louise’s reaction to Brently’s death will be surprising and that Louise is very

different from other women. Whereas most women would gaze reflectively at

the sky and clouds, Louise’s gaze suggests something different, something

shrewder or more active. What she sees as she gazes out the window is

different from what other women would likely see after their husbands have

died. Not long after this passage, Louise acknowledges the joyous feeling of

independence that Brently’s death has given her. Here, at the window, the

first breaths of these feelings are stirring, and her “intelligent thought” will

quickly engage once again as she processes these feelings and allows

herself to analyze what they mean.

2. 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. 

This quotation appears close to the end of the story, just before Louise

leaves her bedroom to go back downstairs, and illuminates the extent of

Louise’s elation. Before Brently’s death, Louise viewed her life with

trepidation, envisioning years of dull, unchanging dependence and

oppression. The “shudder” she felt was one of dread. Now, however, she is

free and independent, and her life is suddenly worth living. Whereas she

once hoped life would be short, she now prays for a long, happy life. This

passage, besides showing us how fully Louise feels her independence, also

highlights the unexpectedness of Louise’s reaction. Rather than dread a life

lived alone, this solitude is, for Louise, reason enough to anticipate the future

eagerly. When Brently returns, she dies, unable to face the return of the life

that she’d dreaded so much.