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Definition of Tone
The tone of a piece of writing is its general character or attitude, which might be cheerful or depressive, sarcastic or sincere, comical or mournful, praising or critical, and so on. For instance... read full definition
The tone of a piece of writing is its general character or attitude, which might be cheerful or depressive, sarcastic or sincere, comical or mournful, praising or critical... read full definition
The tone of a piece of writing is its general character or attitude, which might be cheerful or depressive, sarcastic or sincere, comical... read full definition
Tone
Explanation and Analysis:
The tone of “The Story of an Hour” is ironic and, eventually, pessimistic. Throughout the story, somber and cheerful language are paired in an ironic and even disconcerting way. This, in turn, corresponds with Louise’s ambivalent reaction to her husband, Brently’s, death in a railroad accident.
The tone is distinctly somber at the beginning of the story, when Louise first learns that her husband has been killed:
She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
Phrases like “sudden, wild abandonment,” “storm of grief,” and “physical exhaustion that haunted her body” reflect the devastation and powerlessness that Louise initially feels in reaction to Brently’s death.
But as the story progresses, the tone becomes increasingly ironic as it juxtaposes this sort of unsettling language with sensory details that are associated with liveliness, beauty, and pleasure. For instance, as Louise continues to process the loss of her husband, she looks out her bedroom window and feels a sense of rebirth:
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver 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.
Passages like these are lighthearted and optimistic, which reflects the fact that Louise is shifting from grief to reluctant excitement as she realizes that she’s freer and happier without her husband. The flowery, poetic language that the story uses when Louise is thinking about the outside world and about her new life as a widow creates a darkly ironic tone when compared to the morbid language at the beginning of the story. In this way, the story’s tone reflects Louise’s conflicting emotions about her husband’s death.
The tone turns pessimistic in the final lines of the story, when Brently unexpectedly walks through the door, and Louise is so surprised to see him alive that she dies of a heart attack. The story heavily foreshadows this moment by hinting at Louise’s heart troubles throughout the story, and her death itself is conveyed in a quick and unceremonious way—it’s described in a single sentence, the final line of the story. Ending the story with this tone shift implies that Louise’s newfound independence was an illusion all along, and that her death was inevitable. Thus, “The Story of an Hour” leaves readers with the pessimistic suggestion that for 19th-century housewives like Louise, there is no viable path to freedom.
Related Themes:
