SOURCE: Berkove, Lawrence L. “Fatal Self-Assertion in Kate Chopin's ‘The Story of an Hour.’” American Literary Realism 32, no. 2 (winter 2000): 152-58.

In the following essay, Berkove contends that Chopin's narration of “The Story of an Hour” is ironic rather than straightforward.

Kate Chopin's thousand-word short story, “The Story of an Hour,” has understandably become a favorite selection for collections of short stories as well as for anthologies of American literature. Few other stories say so much in so few words. There has been, moreover, virtual critical agreement on what the story says: its heroine dies, ironically and tragically, just as she has been freed from a constricting marriage and has realized self-assertion as the deepest element of her being. Confidence in this interpretation, however, may be misplaced, for using the standard proposed for the story by Toth and Seyersted—“every detail contributes to the emotional impact”¹—there is evidence...