Elements of Fiction: Analysis of Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour' and Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Black Cat'

This article analyzes the use of symbolism in Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour' and Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Black Cat' and provides a psychoanalytic criticism of the same.

Running head: ELEMENTS OF FICTION
Elements of fiction
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1ELEMENTS OF FICTION
1. In Kate Chopin’s short story, “The Story of an Hour”, the protagonist is Louise
Mallard, who had struggled with heart trouble all her life. At the start of the story, Louise
receives news of her husband’s death in a railroad accident. However, instead of being grief
stricken, she gets a taste of freedom and independence that had been denied to her due to the
shackles of married life. Just when she was about to embrace life as a liberated woman,
Louise finds out that her husband was indeed alive; seeing him walk through the door proved
to be too much for her fragile heart, and she died of shock (Chopin, 2018).
However, in this aspect, it is important to analyze the Louise Mallard’s exact cause of
death. At the end of the story, the physician ruled that Louise died of “joy that kills” –
implying that Mrs. Mallard had been so overjoyed with her husband’s return, that it had
overwhelmed her, causing a heart failure. On the contrary, it was the loss of her new found
freedom that killed her. After Mr. Mallard’s death, Louise felt that a massive burden had been
taken off her shoulders, and she was finally able to breathe. She felt a sense of freedom – a
feeling previously unknown to her. Like most married women in the nineteenth and twentieth
century, Louise too had been a prisoner in her own home. It was only after her husband’s
death that she got back her long lost sense of identity and free will (Kusuma, 2015). Thus,
when he returns, Mrs. Mallard is unable to come to terms with the fact that she would have to
go back to a life of restrictions and restraints imposed on her by marriage. She realizes that
the only way a woman could attain complete freedom in the contemporary society was
through death. It was not joy that killed her, but the realization that her “body and spirit”
could never be free in a traditional orthodox society, which led to her demise.
2. Extensive use of symbolism in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe calls for psychoanalytic
criticism of the same (Wright, 2013). In his short story, “The Black Cat” which was
published in 1843, the symbolism of the titular black cat is all pervasive, and must be
analyzed to understand the central theme of the story (Poe, 2014). In the story, the protagonist

2ELEMENTS OF FICTION
is a man, who leads a relatively happy family life with his wife and his favorite pet, a black
cat named Pluto. The symbolism of the black cat in the story is twofold – one, as the title and
its significance and second, as a character in the tale.
In this story, the black cat functions as a metaphor, chronicling the path of his owner
as he spirals towards insanity. With regards to Poe, it must also be stated that he rarely named
his characters at random. The fact that Pluto was the god of the dead in ancient Greek
mythology probably had something to do with the naming of the cat. In the sinister story that
Poe has spun, the black cat also symbolizes the harmful effects of alcohol addiction. The
owner clearly did not want his favorite cat to witness his downfall and deterioration; as a
result, in a fit of anger, he gouges out Pluto’s eye. Pluto’s mutilation might also be a
metaphor for the guilt that was eating up the narrator. Pluto was killed, but he is also
resurrected so as to torment the narrator who is unable to escape from the sins he has
committed.

3ELEMENTS OF FICTION
References:
Chopin, K. (2018). The story of an hour. Joe Books Ltd.
Kusuma, P. A. (2015). LIBERAL FEMINISM VALUES IN KATE CHOPIN’S STORY OF AN
HOUR (Doctoral dissertation, DIAN NUSWANTORO UNIVERSITY).
Poe, E. A. (2014). The Black Cat: Short Story. HarperCollins Canada.
Wright, E. (2013). Psychoanalytic criticism. Routledge.