Doctors say Mrs. Mallard died of joy.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 486.

Conclusion

Mr. Mallard walks in, far from dead, shocking everyone.

Denouement

Suddenly, a totally unexpected thing happens: Mr. Mallard comes home. Everyone's shocked, except Mr. Mallard, who has no idea of what's been going on. Even though Josephine and Richards are surprised too, they try to keep Mrs. Mallard from receiving the shock. But they can't. As if getting a shock wouldn't be hard enough on her heart, she's got all these emotions and excitement about freedom running through her body.

We readers have to piece together the fact that Mrs. Mallard has died based on what we know about her (the weak heart), her shock on seeing Mr. Mallard, and the narrator's dry statement that Richards couldn't prevent her new shock. Between that and the doctors' explanation for her death, we realize that Mrs. Mallard has passed away. Unlike her husband's death in the train accident, there's no room for error or miscommunication there. She can't return. The events foreshadowed in the "Initial Situation" have come true.

Type of plot structure:straight

2. System of images: The story only lasts an hour, which doesn't leave the characters much time for things to get steamy. However, for all we know Mrs. Mallard's sister, Josephine, and Mr. Mallard's friend, Richards, have some kind of flirtation going on, on the side. (That's totally reading between the lines, though. But you have to wonder about that kind of thing when you've got unattached men and women wandering about an understated nineteenth-century drawing room.) In any case, Mrs. Mallard believes for most of the story that she's just become a widow, which means she's more focused on her own feelings and processing the news than being intimate with someone. She wants to be by herself.