Certainly, the revelation that Louise Mallard is "afflicted with a heart trouble" and needs to have things broken to her "gently" inspires our sympathy, as does the news that her husband has died. Once we begin to understand, however, that Louise was feeling relieved by the news of her husband's death, our sympathies might begin to diminish. Soon, the narrator begins to reveal more of her thoughts:
There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
From this, we can infer that Louise has not felt free in her marriage. She has felt confined, as though she had to live for her husband, according to his desires and whims, instead of for herself and her own. She feels as though her own will has been bent by his, despite his evident love for her. Even though she knows, however, that he was kind and loving, that knowledge does not make her feel less excited about a future in which she is not controlled at all, a future in which she gets to make her own choices. Once we learn how stifling Louise found marriage, how disempowered it made her feel, and how little her own desires mattered, it becomes easier to sympathize with her once again.
The primary element that arouses the reader's sympathy for Louise Mallard is the shocking, sudden loss of her husband. Because the news comes without warning, and we have all at some time been blind-sided with bad news, we can sympathize and even empathize with Louise.
This feeling is accentuated when Louise cries from grief and anticipates feeling overwhelmed once more by grief when she will see her husband in his coffin. She thinks about what he will look like, and reflects that he had always loved her.
The element of shock and surprise is repeated at the end, when Brett appears alive and well. This time the reader is as shocked as Louise is, for Kate Chopin had greatly built up Louise's reasons that her grief had turned to relief at her freedom. The reader cannot feel sad that a good, loving man is alive, but most can sympathize with her cravings for liberation and autonomy, and with the rollercoaster of emotions from two huge surprises.
I think there are several points in the story that are aimed at getting readers to feel sympathy for Mrs. Mallard. I believe that the first sentence of the story contains two pieces of concrete information that do a nice job of getting readers to feel sympathetic toward Mrs. Mallard.
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.
The first piece of information is that she has heart trouble. That is a fairly major affliction. Heart disease of any kind is no laughing matter, because it can be fatal quickly and at any moment. The second piece of information is then given to readers. Her husband has just died. We have no idea what her relationship with her husband was like, but most readers would assume that news of her husband's death has to be heartbreaking. She married the man for one reason or another, and we would presume that Mrs. Mallard is going to be sad. We would be sad in that same situation, so we feel sympathy toward her. We continue to feel that sympathy as she sobs uncontrollably with "wild abandonment in her sister's arms." It is not until we see Mrs. Mallard's emerging joy at the opportunities she now has because of her husband's death that we start to question whether or not our sympathy was correctly placed.
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