Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour: The Character of Mrs. Mallard

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attempt to understand her own emotions. She sits down "pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul." She is then described sitting "with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams." This is a description of a woman coming to terms with something. The reference to her as a child reinforces that she is immature in some ways, with the process one of her growing up and coming to understand herself.
It is in the next passage that Mrs. Mallard finally becomes aware of her own feelings. She has acted on her emotional response and now she is developing the clarity to understand her own reaction, "There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name." This 'something' coming to her is actually ...

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