I'm not going to say that the doctors were right about Mrs. Mallard's cause of death... I'm not convinced that they knew what her life must have been really been like. I agree with Tyson, in that a common theme in the stories we've read so far has been that women get the short end of the stick in marriage. Were the doctors women? Did they know what life was like for the female gender?
At any rate, Chopin's narrated illustrations helped me to understand that Mrs. Mallard had finally escaped from the oppression of her marriage. She had found freedom, and it was beautiful. It's easy to assume that she had wanted these things for a very long time and they were desires that plagued her. The plague of wishing and wanting freedom wasn't something she could just let go of. It had become an incurable disease.
The doctors said, "She died of heart disease--a joy that kills." I will agree with the doctors so far as to say that once we have something we've always wanted, it's hard to let it go. Mrs. Mallard had just started wrapping her fingers around what she had always wanted and seeing her husband alive was devastating. Here he was, back to be a part of her life again, and she could no longer give herself what she now needed to survive, but...her heart could. In order to find a freedom that could never be taken from her, she had to lose her life. Her heart's disease, a longing desire for an ultimate joy, killed her.
With her death, she found true freedom.
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