.

             Further, as Chopin describes Mrs. Mallard's thoughts after hearing the news:.

             There would be no one to live for during those coming .

             years; she would live for herself. There would be no .

             powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence .

             with which men and women believe they have a right to .

             impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. 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. ("The Story of an Hour").

             .

             When Mrs. Mallard next isolates herself behind closed doors, in her shock and grief, from her sister Josephine whose husband had just broken the bad news to his sister-in-law, Josephine says through the closed door, worried, to her sister that "you will make yourself ill". (At the end of the story Mrs. Mallard does become ill, but not for the reason Josephine expects).

             What Mrs. Mallard is actually experiencing behind the closed door, rather than the uncontrollable grief it seems like to her sister, is a feeling of liberation from the restraints of being married: As Chopin states: .

             Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of .

             her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of .

             days that would be her own. She breathed a quick .

             prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday .

             she had thought with a shudder that life might be .

             long.

             Only yesterday, as a married woman, Mrs. Mallard had hoped for an early death. Now, suddenly, thinking she is a widow, she hopes instead for a long life. Within an hour, though, Mrs. Mallard learns instead that her husband has not been in an accident at all. The earlier news of Brently Mallard's death had just been a case of mistaken identity, his wife realizes as he walks in the door alive and unharmed. As Chopin writes, in fact: "He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one" ("The story of an Hour").