Story Of An Hour Mrs Mallard example essay topic
How each character feels at the end of the transformations is another significant difference. In Bernice Bobs her Hair, the main character starts the story wanting to be popular with men but has no idea how to do it. She only begins to understand popularity after her cousin tears her down and transforms her into a confident and modern woman. This, however, is not the end of the story. Because of her cousin's jealousy, she is tricked into bobbing her hair, and is transformed back into a social outcast. The same large amount of changes occurs in The Story of an Hour.
Mrs. Mallard is first saddened by the news of her husbands supposed death, then she thinks of how much she disliked him, and is happy about the event, and once she finds out that he is still alive, she is brought to death. The Story of an Hour would have never took place if not for the specific event of Mrs Mallard being told of her husband's alleged death. She never would have undergone the transformations of sorrow, joy, and death if she had never heard th news. In Bernice Bobs her Hair, the catalyst that puts the transformations in motion is the confrontation between Bernice and her cousin Marjorie.
Had Marjorie not been so brutal in describing Bernice's deficiencies, than Bernice never would have changed. While both stories are about changes and transformations, the time in which it takes each character to go through the transformations varies a great deal upon the story. In the Story of an Hour, the transformations Mrs. Mallard undergoes takes, well, an hour. The shift from sorrow to joy takes about 50 minutes and the her death makes up the other ten. In Bernice Bobs her Hair, Bernice's social climbing takes time and even weeks before we see any noticeable change.
In the Story of an Hour Mrs. Mallard starts her transformations with sorrow. I am sure, however, that she would much rather be sad then dead, which is the way she is after her transformations. Bernice on the other hand may not seem ecstatic about the way things went for her, but after all her transformations, she does seem happy to have acquired her newly found wisdom about womanhood, and popularity. We truly feel like she is better off at the end of the story than at the beginning. The Story of an Hour's main theme is Irony. The change from sorrow to joy in such a short time contributes to this theme.
Mrs. Mallard's shock and ultimate death, is another ironic transformation given that her husband was, in fact, alive. Bernice Bobs her Hair seems to contain be happy with who you are as an underlying truth. Her transformation gave her confidence, and her destruction gave her the wisdom to realize that the confidence was always hers.