Mrs. Mallard

At the beginning of the story, the author describes Mrs.Mallard as a woman having the distinctive trait of self-assertion which is constrained by her marriage. She seems to be the "victim" of an overbearing but occasionally loving husband. Being told of her husband's death, "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inablity to accept its significance." This shows that she is not totally locked into marriage as most women in her time. Although "she had loved him--sometimes," she unconsciously does not want to accept blindly the situation of being controlled by her husband. Mrs.Mallard is not a one-dimentional, clone-like woman having an expected, acceptable emotional response for every life condition.