How do these windows and the views from them inform readers understanding of the thoughts and feelings of the main characters? Weaved within the threads of both stories is the effects of outside forces and nature upon the women. In the Story of an hour, Mrs. Mallard has received the news that her husband is dead, as so she heads up to her room, distraught. She is “pressed down by a physical exhaustion” into this chair that is conveniently facing an open window. Peering out the open window, her senses are “…all aquiver with the new spring life” (2) and She smells the “delicious breath of rain…in the air” while resting in a “comfortable, roomy armchair”(2). These images begin to stir awareness within the reader, suggesting that perhaps the death of her husband is simply another opportunity looking her in the face. She hears There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul. She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves. There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window. She sat 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. She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated...