the story of an hour文体分析

The Stylistic Analysi s of the Story of an Hour

I. Introduction:

1. Brief account of the author

Kate Chop in was born Kate O'Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri in 1850 to Eliza and Thomas O'Flaherty. She was the only child to live past the age of twenty-five in her family. She married Oscar Chopin at the age of twenty in 1870 and then settled in New Orleans where she had five boys and two girls before she was 28. Her husband died of swamp fever there in 1882. Chopin found herself in a state of depression after the death of her husband. He started writing.

She was well known as a woman writer. She had published over one hundred stories, essays, and sketches in literary magazines. Because of her pursuit of women’s freedom and independence in the USA, Kate Chopin is considered as a forerunner of feminist author of the 20th century. The Story of an Hour was written in 1894. It is one of Kate’s works of feminism. In 1915, Fred Lewis Pattee [1] wrote, "some of [Chopin's] work is equal to the best that has been produced in France or even in America. [She displayed] what may be described as a native aptitude for narration amounting almost to genius."

2. Brief account of the essay

In the story of an hour, Brently Mallard has died in a roadway disaster. His sister told this to Mallard’s wife, Louise who was young, with a fair, calm face.When she heard this news, “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms.” She went upstairs to a room and stayed alone for an hour because of the storm of grief. In the room, she sat in the chair and shook with a sob. She gazed out of a window. It was spring. Birds were singing. Every thing was so beautiful. Suddenly, an extraordinary thought occurs to Mrs. Mallard. “She saw beyond that bitter moment a long proces sion of years to come that would belong to her absolutely.” She was free! She just made her mind to go out from this tragedy. She found her husband still alive so that she was shocked and died!

3. Major theme of the essay

The theme about this story: a woman in the society at that time who must be responsibly for the family without husband. She was weak in appearance but strong in heart. She was different from other women that she pursued the freedom of herself. However, she could not realize her dream because of powerlessness at last.

II. Linguistic presentation of the theme

In the short story of The Story of an Hour, the author told us this story as a third person. It showed her pursuit of freedom and independence. In her narration, there are more than one thousand words. Most of them are easy to understand. The sentences in this story are concise and fluent.

1.Phonological features

In this story, the author used onomatopoeia, elision, and alliteration. First, in the paragraph five, the “twittering” can create vividness and vitality and it can produce a sound imagine. It can express the beauty of the spring outside the window. Second, I think the elision is best used in the 17th paragraph that Josephine asked Louise to open the door. It can reflect her worry and the emergency. At last, the alliteration is also used, such as “sound” and “scents” in paragraph 9; “opened” and “spread” in paragraph 13 and so on.

2. Graphological features

There are four special punctuations are used in this story. First of all, exclamation marks are used in paragraph 11, 15, 16 to reveal her happiness and willingness to pursue freedom. Then, dashes are seemed in paragraph 17 and the last paragraph. In paragraph 17, dash is used to explain the reason. The last paragraph is used to represent the effect of irony. The third, comma are used between sentence. In this way, the situation can be expressed clearly and lively. Such as: “Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her.” In addition, quotation marks are also used in the second paragraph. “Killed” refers to the people who were killed in the accident.

2.Lexical features

Almost words in this story are common words. At the same time, not only general words but also specific words do exist in this story. The specific words tend to give color and tang, tend to appeal to the imagination. We can understand better about the context emotions. Such as: “paralyzed”,“weep” in paragraph 3. We can realize her great grief about her husband’s death. Then, in paragraph 7, the word “sob” and in paragraph 9, the word “creeping” gives us

a real scene through our imagination. In addition, many general words are also used like

“crying”“delicious”“comfortable” in paragraph 5. Good writing or speaking has both general and specific information.Then,the immediate repetition in this story “free, free, free!” is obvious. It can let the readers understand the eager of the freedom of the author. But it can’t be a formal sentence. At last, the author used some emotive words. Such as “a litter whispered word” in paragraph 11 to show her attitude to freedom.

3.Syntactic features

In this story, there are long sentences and short sentences. Long sentences are used in