More Weird Irony

In Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour, the reader follows the thought process of a woman who is finding out she has lost her husband.  She is described as a delicate woman, even having heart problems, who was handled with care when told the news.  Upon hearing her husband is gone, she reacts in a way that is not entirely unpredictable.  She loses concentration, seems to stare off into space.  She then retreats to her room, where she sits in front of a large window and thinks about her life.  Initially she felt very depressed, thinking she is alone in the world and will have nobody to live for except herself.  But after a few minutes, she begins to feel as if she is now free from anybody's desires but her own.  The speaker said, "And yet she had loved him- sometimes.  Often she had not.  What did it matter!" (Chopin).  She composes herself, and goes back out into the world, now with a new enthusiasm for her freedom.  Yet as she comes downstairs, her husband walks through the front door, making it apparent that his death had been a mistake.  The very shock of seeing him made his wife heart give out, and she passed away.  The irony is that after gaining closure on his death and deciding life may be better without him, the wife is granted another chance at a relationship with her husband, which in turn kills her.