“The Story of an Hour” is the story about Mrs. Mallard’s reaction after hearing the bad news within an hour. Kate Chopin uses “limited omniscience” to set the ironic point of view, and “irony” is the most wonderful skill of it that she expresses with banter. The narrator enters everyone’s mind and describes Mrs. Mallard’s entirely also selects others’. The characters, Josephine and Richards, seem to know Mrs. Mallard very much. That’s the irony though. The only part you can trust the “literal meaning” is the beginning—her scare and sorrow. Besides that, you shall analyze the story in two ways, and divide it into the aspects of mentality and physicality, and so do the viewpoints of Mrs. Mallard and the others (i.e., Josephine, Richards, Brently Mallard, and the doctor)
　　
　　At the beginning, the narrator sets the social morality and the foreshadowing of the death—the heart disease—so that Mrs. Mallard may be unable to be afflicted by tragedy. Richards, who has been in the newspaper office, “hastens to forestall” as he know the intelligence—Brently dies of the railroad disaster. Josephine tries to “reveal in half concealing”, and Mrs. Mallard “weeps with wild abandonment in her sister’s arms.” After going away to her room (from paragraph 4 to 9), she starts to lose control, being too sad to accept the news. And then her heart disease troubles her. She becomes more and more crazy because of the cruel message. When calming down and descending the stairs, she sees her husband back, being killed by “joy” and heart attack all of a sudden.Everything is tragic throughout the story. The eye view of the others makes a stereotype of moralities.

　　Actually, she fights against herself as her bosom “rises”, falling “tumultuously” (heart attack), wondering what she shall be. In other words, she is “awakening” from the social bondage. The narrator describes in “the Story of an Hour”, “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.”(553) She wants to free herself from being unwilling to belong to the “fellow”, i.e., her husband, and from living under the expectation of the society. “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life.”(552) The narrator declares. Everything is described with new-lighted life and no sorrow; that is, she is aquiver with new life and hope! Then she gets the answer, just like a winner and “a goddess of Victory” in women’s battle—the climax of “the Story of an Hour”. “And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter!”(553) The narrator describes. However, Mr. Mallard is still alive, and coming back unexpectedly.
　　
　　Well, here comes a question; that is, does she win the battle? There are two explanations. On the one hand, Mr. Mallard’s surviving means that she still not break up with him, being part of “the Mallards”. Hence you can regard Mrs. Mallard as a loser.  On the other hand, she is a winner. Her death is not only leaving from her shell, her body, but also freeing her soul mentally, escaping from her destiny and the hitch of the society. Her “self-awareness” truly comes round. The narrator declares, “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills.”(553) This paragraph elevates the gap to the top—Mrs. Mallard’s avant-garde idea is detached from others’ old-fashioned thought. Kate Chopin expresses Feminism through extremely monstrous happiness and sadness—irony. Does anyone notice that Mrs. Mallard is the only one who has no first name (except the non-named doctor)?