The Story Of An Hour
...ith a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength.” She looks out the window and mulls over what the future might bring. Louise considers her future through the view of her window. She sees the “tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life.” These trees represent her heart and feelings of release. “The delicious breath of rain in the air” is almost as if she is taking a long deep breath of free air, which she has not done in a very long time. She glances off into the “patches of blue sky” in thought. Slowly something is coming to her in which she fears. It is so “subtle and elusive” at first. She feels it “creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that fills the air.” She begins to identify “this thing that is approaching to posses her.” It is freedom. It spills out on a whispered breath, “free, free, free!” She does not allow herself to feel remorse in how she feels. Louise knows that she will weep when she sees her husband’s “hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead.” But she refuses to neither wallow in the death, nor live in the past. She only sees her future and the “years to come that would belong to her absolutely.” Louise is determined not to dwell on the past; she is only looking to her future and the “spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own.” Josephine, Louise’s sister, is frantically trying to get Louise to answer her from the doorway to her room. Josephine fears that her sister might be trying to kill herself or that she will have “heart trouble.” Louise assures her that she is fine and tells her to “Go away. I am not making myself ill.” Louise does not want to be bothered. She is enjoying her newfound freedom and she does not want to share it with anyone. She has just found this new life and wishes to “live for herself” and not be burdened by answering to anyone. At last, Louise is ready to greet her new life. She rises from the chair and heads to the door and her sister. Louise grasps her sister by the waist and heads for the stairs. The stairs lead her to her new life. She approaches this new life “like a goddess of Victory.” Nothing and nobody will stand in her way of freedom any longer. She desce...