"The Story of an Hour? is one of Kate Chopin's most famous short stories. There is a great deal of marital instability in the story by Chopin because most of her well-known stories and novels deal with a woman who wishes for freedom or a marriage that is out of balance. In "The Story of an Hour,? Chopin deals with an ironical twist; it is that the wife in the story, Louise Mallard, does not realize she is displeased with her marriage until she is told that her husband has been killed in a train accident. For an hour, Louise believes her husband's death and sets about planning her future in her mind; when she discovers the rumor of his death is not true, she dies of a heart problem at the end. The common argument in the story is that whether Louise dies of happiness or sadness...