"The Story of An Hour" by Kate Chopin - Parallels

 I found two interesting parallels within the text that reinforce the theme. The first being the window and the second being Louise's death. 

The window served as the door to her freedom. Looking out of it, seeing the beginnings of spring, the blue sky and clouds, proposed a new beginning for Louise. It was then that she knew something was coming to her, a thing she did not immediately know, yet when fully realized, it was her freedom. The window represents the escape from the world she knew; the room, her home, a place of binding - to her husband and perhaps even her illness, into a place of newness, hope and possibility. The window acted as the catalyst and vehicle to finding hope through despair - in death and in a marriage that was consider death for many women during that time. Louise found her personal silver lining through that window - figuratively and literally ("the delicious breath of rain..." and "patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds....").

Louise's sudden death upon Brently's return represented the inescapable inability to return to ignorance from enlightenment and her unwillingness to release the freedom she had so recently been granted. Once she understood what Brently's death meant for her and experienced (a rather brief) release from him and everything else that came (or did not) with him, she simply could not return. She would have her freedom, either here or in the afterlife. Her "joy that kills" was a delight that came from knowing that now that she claimed her freedom, there was nothing that could be done to take it away - not even her husband's return.