Quote-Response Assignment Week 3

"When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of joy that kills" (Chopin 327).

I chose this quote from Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" simply for irony's sake. I really enjoyed reading this story, probably because it took a turn that I wasn't necessarily expecting. Upon the news of a husband's death, most wives would be heartbroken. Louise Mallard had quite a different reaction. She was overcome with a newfound sense of freedom and opportunity that she had not felt since her marriage to her husband.
I especially liked the detail of her excitement about "spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own" (Chopin 327).
The irony of the quote I selected is that when her husband returns home, indeed very much alive, she herself dies. The doctors assumed it was overwhelming joy that did in Louise's weak heart..however the reader knows that it was the overwhelming sense of loss and disappointment that killed Louise.
It certainly was not the joy of seeing her husband alive that killed Louise, in fact it was very much the opposite. With his arrival home, her aspirations and dreams vanished. Heartbreak for Louise was the death of her life, the way she wanted to live it, not the rumored death of her husband.