Passage One
Kate Chopin
(1851-1904)
Chopin wrote \"The Story of an Hour\" in the spring of 1894, but it was rejected by many magazine editors, at least once for being \"unethical.\" Finally, Vogue published it in December, paying Chopin ten dollars and also the compliment of presenting her to the public as a daring writer. Chopin's work helped energize feminists in her own day and continues to do so today. The theme of this story is autobiographical, though the details are not. Chopin, the mother of six, was widowed at the age of thirty-two. A month after finishing this story, she wrote in her diary that if her husband had lived, she \"would have to forget the past ten years of my growth—my real growth. \"Nevertheless, she does not dismiss marriage as merely a prison for women. A sentence later she admits that she would have given up her ten years of growth in \"the spirit of perfect acquiescence (默许).\" The Story of an Hour
1. Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.
2. It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints
that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of \"killed.\" He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegraph, and had hastened to forestall (抢先行动) any less careful, less tender friend in breathing the sad message.
3. She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sisters arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
4. There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy (宽敞的) armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
5. She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver (quivering slightly) with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves （屋檐）.
6. There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.
7. She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
8. She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke regression （表示回归） and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection （思考）, but rather indicated a suspension （保留，未决） of intelligent thought.
9. There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive （捉摸不定的） to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
10. Now her bosom （胸） rose and fell tumultuously （激动地，纷乱地）. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess （control）her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will—as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.
11. When she abandoned herself （断绝念头，不再考虑）， a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: \"free, free, free!\" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing （running very fast） blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
12. She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted (excited) perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.
13. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death: the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
14. There would be no one to live for her 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 (照明，光明).
15. And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion （自作主张） which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
16. \"Free! Body and soul free!\" she kept whispering.
17. Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the
keyhole, imploring （begging, asking） for admission. \"Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door—you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise For heaven's sake open the door.\"
18. \"Go away. I am not making myself ill.\" No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life (长生不老药) through that open window.
19. 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.
20. She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities （纠缠，一再要求）. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly （不知不觉地） like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
21. Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly (calmly) carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife. 22. But Richards was too late.
23. When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills.
Questions for consideration: 1. What is the wife’s reaction when she first heard of the sad news of her husband’s death 2. Why did the wife say “Free, free, body and soul” How do you understand the relationship between the husband and his wife Do you think they loved each other 3. What happened to the wife at the end of the story Why
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