The Story of an Hour Time Quotes

The overwhelming sense of Richards here is someone in a hurry. He got to Mrs. Mallard as soon as he could when he heard about Mr. Mallard's death. All the negative words here ("only," "forestall," "less careful, "less tender") seem to emphasize how quickly Richards hoped to arrive at the Mallard home.

Mrs. Mallard goes from zero to grief in less than sixty seconds. As soon as she understands the delicate reporting employed by her sister and Richards, Mrs. Mallard reacts instantaneously to the news of her loss. She cries "at once" and her complete emotional outburst is "sudden." These are interesting qualities or actions in light of her weak heart and delicate constitution.

Even as Mrs. Mallard has to accept the fact that Mr. Mallard has died, outside the house, life goes on. Even the trees themselves seem to shake with "new spring life." The outside world hasn't stopped to note the passing of Mr. Mallard at all. The natural world moves to its own, unstoppable clock.

Time slows down as Mrs. Mallard "wait[s]" for whatever's coming. She doesn't know yet but she's scared of it. Meanwhile, the world stays vibrant and beautiful, with "sounds," "scents," and "color[s]" all pointing to a larger horizon than what she's experienced, stuck in her house. The world outside is full of that vitality and freedom missing from her own interior world.

The use of "bitter" here seems to indicate Mrs. Mallard's love for her husband, and her sadness at his passing. Yet the fact that she can "s[ee] beyond" it either shows an unusual grasp of perspective, or shows that Mrs. Mallard isn't completely broken up about her husband's death. She can see into a future where she's alone – and she likes it.

Time seems to stretch ahead of Mrs. Mallard like a winding road, a road she's sending her imagination along. She's indulging in fantasizing. Clearly, this isn't the measured, reasoned argument of an individual trying to talk herself into or out of grief. Mrs. Mallard can't control "[h]er fancy" as it looks at all the "days ahead."

The single event of her husband's death changes the way Mrs. Mallard views her own lifespan. It could say a lot about their marriage that it takes her husband's death to get her excited about life. At best, she's bored and unfulfilled. At worst, who knows? It's hard to think that everything could be perfect, since she sounds so depressed about it.

For the whole duration of the story, Mr. Mallard has basically been in an alternate time zone to the other three characters. While they mourned his passing, he just went about his day. There's never any more explanation than this of why he was supposed to have been in an accident at all (or why Richards, say, didn't wait for a third confirming source).

There may be a pun here because "late" can also refer to a recently deceased person. For much of the story Mr. Mallard is "late," as in dead; when he comes in at the end, he is "too late," as in not getting there in enough time to disprove the shocking news of his supposed death. Finally, Richards is "too late" in shielding Mrs. Mallard from her husband, which results in Mrs. Mallard becoming "late," as in dead, herself.