The Daily Literary Voice — Episode 3: Kate Chopin, "The Story of an Hour"

Episode 3 brings Kate Chopin's 1894 short story "The Story of an Hour" — one of the most compressed, devastating pieces of fiction in the American canon. Barely a thousand words long, it takes place almost entirely inside one woman's mind, in the hour after she learns her husband has died in a railroad accident.

The host introduction covers Chopin's life, the suppression of The Awakening, and what this story asks of the reader. The reading follows the complete text. The outro reflects on what Chopin withholds — and why.

Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis in 1850. Widowed at thirty-two, she raised six children while writing stories about women's inner lives — desire, constraint, and the hunger for selfhood — with an honesty her era was not ready to accept. Her novel The Awakening (1899) was condemned by critics and disappeared from shelves for nearly sixty years. A feminist literary revival in the 1970s returned her to the canon, where she has stayed.

"The Story of an Hour" was first published as "The Dream of an Hour" in Vogue magazine in December 1894. It is public domain.

Theme music: original instrumental (gentle piano and acoustic guitar), generated for this series. Short intro clip and outro clip; no background music bed.