Critical approaches to literature reveal how or why a particular work is constructed and what its social and cultural implications are. Understanding critical perspectives will help you to see and appreciate a literary work as a multilayered construct of meaning. Reading literary criticism will inspire you to reread, rethink, and respond. Soon you will be a full participant in an endless and enriching conversation about literature.

Critical Approaches Interactive Exercises for “The Story of an Hour”

Linked below are exercises on how to interpret “The Story of an Hour” from different critical approaches. Responses to the exercises can be added to your notebook—this will be collated so that you can print or e-mail your work when you are finished.

>Psychoanalytic Criticism
>The New Criticism
>Reader-Response Criticism
>Deconstruction
>Feminist Criticism
>Structuralism

For a model essay about “The Story of an Hour” written from a particular critical approach, select either of the links below:

>The Figure in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”: A Structuralist Reading (PDF)

>Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”: A Feminist Reading (PDF)

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