the joy that kills
This is definitely not what I was expecting to be doing right now. I've been living under this looming pressure to write for a few weeks and even upon soliciting outside help (re: mother's little helpers) I still find myself terrified of writing words. But I'm one last, one good essay away from passing my English class this semester. It's important to me that I'm successful in school, as I've been waiting far too long to be in this position to mess it up now.
That can't be said for very many different aspects of my life due to the fact that I sold myself real short regarding hopes and dreams and fantasies and basic goals for my future. It all seemed so normal at the time, but the weight of my drug addiction kept me so entrenched in my daily struggle that it never even occurred to me that I should plan to be something someday. That I should plan on being alive at 30 years old really was a vague and far away idea. Had it ever crossed my mind that I might live longer than my mother, it would just as quickly be snuffed out by the overwhelming symphony of voices which belonged to the rock n roll gods and icons that made up the rest of the legendary 27 Club - you know, Jimi Hendrix & Janis Joplin and all them - singing to me of a broken home, of ancestral karma, of a needle and the damage done...
Dammit. Now where was that token of literary first-fruits when I needed to write a personal narrative in class last week?! Not banging around this girl's brain that's for sure. The only thing I heard as soon as our professor said "go" was a thunderous roar of clicking. All twenty or so students at once began hammering their keyboards, furiously typing out their life-changing moments of experience and inspirational stories, fully loaded mythos with which to grab those A's and B's. My own thoughts were drowned out by the sound of it, my own clicking seemed so unsure and unworthy by comparison. For the first time in my life I experienced what's been referred to as test anxiety (?). Yeah, that wasn't my best moment. That submission portal totally made me its bitch...
Which brings me to my current bane of existence, that fretful old hag Louise Mallard. Kate Chopin must have created this character to showcase the irony regarding this woman's experience of "freedom". While women in the 19th century weren't yet treated equally, there was no need for Mrs. Mallard's death to make that point. In fact, the oppressive natureof the time was not the most alarming theme that struck me. While the story setting is indicative of women having a more subdued role, that only further indicatesMrs. Mallard was different than her peers. Her expectations of the world and its people are a consistent cause of unbridled pain and suffering, as expectations lead always to disappointment in some way or another.
Had Louise been the kind of woman that concerned herself with social niceties, she would have received the information the way other women might have, as Chopin takes care to point out. That is the first indication that Louise Mallard was a woman prone to hysteria long before her introduction in this story. Louise Mallard was a woman so intensely identified with her role as Mr. Mallard's wife that the idea of him not returning was enough to send her weeping off to her bedroom.Ipoediately upon fleeing to her quarters, she sinks into her oversized armchair and sobs - much the way a toddler throwing a temper tantrum ends up sobbing to himself on the floor as the parent waits for him to calm down. Tbe stillness between her sobs give way to a moment of clarity. Her sobs then soften entirely, and she gives into the stillness. For what appears to be the very first time, she is seeing things she was always too self-absorbed to see before. The first signs of spring out beyond her bedroom window, for example, replaces the sadness and moves her outside of herself. This moment of inner tranquility comes as a direct result of Louise Mallard's experiencing the world, and her place in it, as being exactly the way it should be at that moment. This was her true moment of freedom, her endless supply of peace and serenity no matter what the time or place. Still, this simple yet profound truth eludes her. Suddenly a wave of relief and happiness crashes over her, and she makes her most fatal mistake: confusing that happiness for freedom. Louise Mallard subscribes to the belief system that most of Americans today also subscribe: that happiness is somehow more preferable to sadness, or that happiness and sadness are any different at all. Louise Mallard's happiness in particular came as a response to her realization that she is finally unattached to Bradley Mallard, a man she comes to learn that she respected but did not love, and that whose untimely death will
thrust her forward into a life she's free to live however she chooses. "Free! Free! I'm free!" she whispers, as though it's too good to be true.Weeping widow to empowered everywoman, this incredible and extremely drastic shift in perspective comes at a cost to our protagonist. Mrs. Mallard has attempted to shield herself from the whipping storms of grief with this cloak of happiness, only to realize that the happiness of solitude isn't a tough enough cloak to protect its wearer from the harsh truths of reality. Running out of her bedroom and back into the arms of her sister, we are reminded of the last scene featuring Josephine, and we are given a glimpse of the striking similarity between each of them. In both, Louise is held by Josephine's embrace, hysterical in one way or another, while her sister desperately tries to console her. In the second scene, however, Josephine is reassured by Louise that everything will be okay after all. As if on cue to test that theory, the front door handle jostles a bit, twists, and then opens to reveal a very put-together Bradley Mallard, seemingly unaware of any train accident or that he was thought to be dead. Before Chopin has the chance to expand on what this means about Mr. Mallard's whereabouts and what he might have really been doing (since he was obviously not on the train home from work), Louise Mallard drops dead. One can only imagine the shock and awe she must have felt in that final moment, slave to her emotions that she was. All throughout the story of her last hour alive, Louise Mallard clasps and clutches and grabs and pinches and squeezes, but freedom remains the wet bar of soap, slipping and squirming right between her fingers.
"Story of an Hour", a short story by author Kate Chopin, illustrates for its audience the dangers of identifying so strongly with certain beliefs that you become blind to alternative perspectives and ideas, that you become boxed in to your limited experience of the world with no way to transcend it, no avenue to lead you outisde of the box, and without any escape whatsoever from the dull and colorless monotony of The (One And) Only Way Things Are. Had Louise just been able to stop for that one pivotal minute to recognize that with or without Brad, she'd find her way, then she would have something to counteract the sadness she experiences from losing him. Instead she scrambles desperately to feel something else, something less painful. In the entire sixty minutes that Chopin allows us to glimpse this world, Louise only uses one of them productively. She finds the solution to her problem effortlessly, guided by those moments of stillness in between sobs that signal her mourning. No, she mourns not for Bradley Mallard - she mourns for herself. Not for his loss of life, but for her loss of identity. Not for the loss of her marriage, but for the loss of her role as a kept woman - for that has always been her part to play, her lot in life, her way to get by. Her experience has always been that of life as the lovely wife of Bradley Mallard. As her sister delivers the news of his death, she can feel her experience dissolving. While to the untrained eye it might look like a dissolution, in reality it is merely a transformation. Had she ever tried to hold on to an experience of the present moment, she would know the clarity that comes from being still and silent. Had she paid more attention to those first signs of Spring, she would know what it means to be guided by intuition. Had she not been so keen first on her identity as The Wife of Bradley Mallard and then immediately following his unexpected demise as The Young Widow Ready to Be Free, she might have noticed that there was a spectrum of identities in between the two, a whole range of personalities and perspectives and truths and belief systems and games to play during her lifetime that she never need confine or limit herself to just one. That she could experience life as whomever she chose and live it any way she wanted. Had she just been able to release her expectations of the world, she'd have lived a long and prosperous life just like Bradley. After all, he wasn't on the train like he was supposed to be, which means he's probably no stranger to seeking out new experiences himself.
It was said just after the shocking tragedy of her death that Louise suffered "the joy that kills". While that explanation was meant to honor the return of Brad Mallard and how thrilled she must have been to see him, the actual truth remains that "the joy that kills" is absolutely responsible for the death of Louise Mallard. The joy that Louise chose to exploit, rather than utilize for the development of her character. The joy she chose to hide behind, when instead she could have accepted her sadness and how uncomfortable it was, thus releasing it's power. Yes, the very same joy that Louise attempted to trade her grief for, the very grief that held the key to her transcendence, is the joy that kills. So while certainly correct as far as being the reason that she dies, it is correct for a very different reason than the literally overwhelming feeling of relief she feels upon seeing him walk through the front door. No, it's not joy per se, but
the slavery that joy represents. The way Louise remains encapsulated within her grief, her fear, her elation, and her disappointment, her joy..whatever pain, or pleasure, that her limbic system decides to employ is another deadly weapon Louise is powerless against.
Once again, Louise has consistently and definitivelybehaved like a self-obsessed, hysterical ninny, enslaved to her emotions, braving whatever depths of depravity they may inflict upon her and doing sowithout a moment's hesitation. She has the opportunity to free herself from this cyclical pattern of attachment and suffering, yet that opportunity comes and goes without her even taking notice.
†
perience of life as the lovely wife of Bradley Mallard.
perhaps her heart would not have been so quick to shut down.
. She no
The experience she has upstairs in her bedroom where she admits she never really loved her husband would have sufficed, had realizing she was living in Mr. Mallard's shadow been the Point Of It All, thus leading her to an eventual embrace of her new life without him.
However, did indeed die frm the joy that kills - she is