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Interpretation of The Story of an Hour From the Perspective of Labov’s Narrative Structure Theory

Xinan Feng

Advances in Linguistics Research / 2026,8(3): 309-318 / 2026-08-04 10 6

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• Information:

  Nanchang Hangkong University, Nanchang, China

• Keywords:
  William Labov; Labovian Narrative Structure Theory; The Story of an Hour; Kate Chopin
• Abstract: This study transcends conventional feminist critical strategies by using William Labov’s narrative structure theory (including six functional components, namely Abstract, Orientation, Complicating Action, Evaluation, Resolution, and Coda) as an interpretive framework for re-examining Kate Chopin’s short story The Story of an Hour. The research pursues a twofold objective: first, to test the transferability of this model, originally devised for oral personal-experience narratives, to the domain of written literary fiction; and second, to uncover how Chopin’s formal narrative strategies actively contribute to the story’s feminist ideological project. Through a systematic mapping of the textual segments onto Labov’s six-part schema, the analysis places particular emphasis on the Evaluation component, which Labov identifies as the interpretive core of any narrative. It investigates how it concretizes the protagonist Louise Mallard’s profound psychological transition from grief to emancipatory awakening and, ultimately, to fatal disillusionment. The findings reveal that Chopin deploys a carefully calibrated structural design and a range of embedded evaluative devices to render the protagonist’s inner transformation both vivid and ideologically significant. In so doing, the narrative powerfully dramatizes women’s spiritual suffocation within patriarchal marriages, the irresistible urge toward self-assertion, and the tragic suppression of that awakening by social forces. By bridging sociolinguistic narratology and literary analysis, the study ultimately confirms that Labov’s theoretical framework, far from being confined to oral discourse, offers a systematic, functional, and analytically productive approach for interpreting literary texts, particularly in exposing how narrative form itself can serve as a vehicle for ideological resistance and feminist critique. And this paper contributes both a methodological innovation to Chopin scholarship and a nuanced demonstration of the feminist implications embedded in narrative architecture.
• DOI: 10.35534/lin.0803026 (registering DOI)
• Cite: Feng, X. N. (2026). Interpretation of The Story of an Hour From the Perspective of Labov’s Narrative Structure Theory. Advances in Linguistics Research, 8(3), 309-318.