The main conflict in “The Story of an Hour” is that between Louise Mallard, the protagonist, and her society. The story was written in the 1890s, and context clues would suggest that it takes place during this same era. In the 1890s, women in the United States had few rights. When they married, their identities became, in a manner of speaking, legally covered by their husbands’ identities, and any property they owned prior to the marriage became their husbands’. Women could not legally vote, as it was assumed that a woman had no need to vote because either her father or her husband would vote for the household.

Despite this, it is not Brently Mallard, Louise’s reportedly dead husband, who poses as her antagonist throughout the story. When Louise reflects on his life, she thinks of his “kind, tender hands” and how he “never looked save with love upon her.” This means that he only ever looked at her with love. Instead, it seems to be the restrictions and the repression of her individual identity imposed by the marriage state that upset Louise so much. Brently’s legal right to make decisions for her—and her lack of legal rights to act independently of him, no matter how loving he was—antagonize her. This is what makes society the antagonist in this story and the conflict between Louise Mallard and her society the main conflict.

I would say this story serves as an example of person vs. society (though in this context, one might also see elements of person vs. self).

"The Story of an Hour" opens with Louise Mallard being alerted to the news of her husband's death (news that will be shown to be false at the end of story). After hearing this news, she falls into grief and retreats into her room. As the story continues, it follows the evolution of Louise Mallard's emotions in the aftermath of this moment. In this, it certainly contains a strong element of person vs. self (and should be viewed in such a lens).

At the same time, however, this story ultimately centers around an epiphany on Mrs. Mallard's part that stems from a far deeper struggle against the society in which she resides. It is this epiphany that ultimately empowers her, giving rise to what Kate Chopin refers to, within the story itself, as "a monstrous joy." Ultimately, widowhood means the realization of personal agency. For the first time, Louise Mallard belongs to herself.

Thus, her husband's death has set her free. Note, however, that she does not seem to harbor any particular resentment to her husband himself. Indeed, consider how Kate Chopin writes the following about him:

She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead.

This, then, is not a story shaped by person vs. person conflict. Rather, her problem is the sexist and chauvinistic foundations that lie within the society she inhabits. It is these assumptions and expectations that she is struggling to overcome.

The fundamental conflict in Chopin's work is the idea of what is supposed to be experienced as opposed to what is experienced.  Louise finds herself poised between these incommensurate ends when she is told of her husband's death.  The socially conditioned response is for her to mourn his passing, but the personal response which responds the essence of her conflict is the newly discovered freedom and sense of self that is now upon her.  This becomes a critical conflict within Louise.  While experiencing the loss of her husband provides one set of responses, the new definition of self which awaits gives her another set of responses.  This conflict between what social conditioning and personal experience represents a fundamental battle within Louise.

I agree with the previous poster. The conflict in Kate Chopin's short story "The Story of an Hour" is entirely expressed through the thoughts of Mrs. Mallard -- the report of her husband's death makes her, perhaps for the first time, understand how she has been feeling all this time. That self-awareness -- that thing "too subtle and elusive to name" -- is achieved when she utters the words "free, free, free!" That Mrs. Mallard has indeed been dominated by men, as the previous poster, and by the rigid social conventions for women of her class at the turn of the century can be seen in how she is treated in the story. Her husband's friend is the first to hear and deliver the news of the accident and the one who tries to "screen" the husband from the wife's view. Her sister is the one who breaks the news to her and pleads to be allowed into her locked room. Everyone seems to act on her; she does almost nothing physical, on her own, in the story.

To me, the conflict in this story is between Mrs. Louise Mallard and the society in which she lives.  Her desire to be an independent woman is in conflict with the society she lives in, which is dominated by men.

In the story, Mrs. Mallard finds out her husband is (supposedly) dead.  She discovers, as she thinks about it, that she really is happy that he is dead.  Now she will be able to do what she wants to do rather than having to go along with his desires.  When she finds out he is really alive, she dies of a heart attack.

So, she really wants to be independent, but her society will never let her be while she and her husband are both alive.

In “The Story of an Hour,” Louise Mallard is engaged in a conflict with the values of the patriarchal society in which she lives. Those values dictate that Louise, as a married woman, is there to cater to the needs of her family. In relation to her husband, this means putting his needs first every time. As a highly intelligent woman with a heightened aesthetic appreciation of the world around her, Louise must find such restrictions especially difficult to handle.

One can only imagine, then, how elated she is at the prospect of freedom when she is informed of her husband's death. All of a sudden, whole new vistas of opportunity open up to Louise, allowing her to think about leading a life of her own for the first time in years.

Life for women as a whole is difficult in Louise's society, but as a widow, she will at least have far greater freedom than she would if she had remained married. Widowhood is about the only realistic way that Louise can possibly prevail in the never-ending conflict with patriarchal society and its repressive values.

It is no wonder, then, that she expresses such elation at the prospect of entering a new chapter in her life without her husband—who, despite his fundamental decency, still represented an intensely repressive social system.

"The Story of an Hour" is very much a story about Louise Mallard and her internal life. As such, the key conflict in the story is a conflict between Louise and her own feelings (internal conflict) but also informed by the society in which she lives (an external pressure). So, the key conflict would seem to be between Louise Mallard and the social pressures which have made her unable to properly understand her own feelings.

But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome. There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself.

And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

The main conflict in Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour" is the internal conflict Louise Mallard experiences as she struggles with the joyful thoughts of becoming an independent widow and the grief of losing her husband. The foundation of this conflict is rooted in Louise's inherent desire to experience independence while she is forced to fulfill her role as an oppressed, obedient housewife.

Louise Mallard is portrayed as a submissive housewife who is initially heartbroken by the news of her husband's tragic death. Louise responds by weeping with "wild abandonment" in her sister's arms before locking herself in her upstairs room, where she undergoes a dramatic transformation in private. As Louise stares out the window, she experiences a self-revelation when she contemplates her future as an independent woman, free from adhering to social expectations and rules. Here the narrator underscores Louise's internal conflict:

There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.

Louise's conflicting feelings revolve around her marital expectations and her love for Brently. Although Louise acknowledges that she loves Brently and recognizes the grief attached to his death, she understands that she was primarily living to please him instead of embracing her freedom and satisfying herself. The thought of living for herself and embracing her independence fills Louise with a sense of optimism and hope:

She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

After experiencing the revelation of being free from her marital duties and bending to the will of her husband for the interminable future, Louise Mallard's dreams are shattered when Brently walks through the door, and she dies of shock.

"The Story of an Hour” offers Louise Mallard as a woman who suffers from an internal conflict that pits her lack of fulfillment against love. Louise seems to be a happily married woman, but she experiences the institution of marriage as oppressive and confining. The affection that she feels for her husband, Brently, is offset by her understanding of the extent to which he controls her.

Louise’s condition is located within her heart, which the author presents as a physical malady that parallels the emotional and existential afflictions from which Louise suffers. When she learns that her husband has died in an accident, she is shaken by a “storm of grief” and weeps wildly. Trying to comfort her, Louise’s sister misunderstands the situation. Louise’s true reaction becomes clear when she is alone. She recalls how Brently’s face "had never looked save with love upon her." Although “physical exhaustion … haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul,” what she mostly thinks about is not her loss but her freedom. She is “free” not only from the social bonds of matrimony but also within her true inner self: “Free! Body and soul free!”

The fact that there is no possible resolution for her conflict is indicated by her death, which occurs after Brently appears and is very much alive. The shock that she is not, as she had thought, “free, free, free” proves unbearable.

A literary element that is essential to the plot of a story, the "conflict" is the internal or external problem that is caused by an instigating situation, or the triggering event that moves the plot forward. The instigating event that causes the conflict of the main character is two-fold: first, that Louise Mallard's husband is presumed dead; the problem with this is that Louise also has a weak heart. Breaking the news to Mrs. Mallard will be an issue.

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing.

Therefore, the first conflict is how to convey the news delicately. This conflict is external because it has nothing to do with the philosophical growth of the character itself; it is just something "from outside" that makes Louise suffer.

The internal conflict that comes as a result of the presumed death of Mr. Mallard presents itself as a complication to this conflict;is the self-revelation that Louise actually feels happy and free as a result of Brently Mallard's death. Far from experiencing pain, Louise feels

"Free! Body and soul free!"

This must have come as a shock to Louise, herself, and as a result of this, her heart begins to race, and palpitate in wild dreams of what her future life will be like. This in no way indicates that Louise hates, or does not love, Brently. She even says that she had "sometimes" loved him, and that he had been nothing but kind to her. However, marriage and the submission of her womanhood is something that she has wholeheartedly come to dislike. The idea of a life free of social expectations and rules has made her wild with excitement.

Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

The denouement of the story, which occurs when Brently Mallard enters the home after the reader realizes that the news of his death were premature and false, ends when Louise dies from the same conflicting condition that had been a problem in the story form the beginning.

Therefore, out of the internal and external conflicts that surface as a result of the triggering event it is the external conflict, the weak heart condition of Louise Mallard, the one which seems to be the most powerful. After all, if Mrs. Mallard had not a weak heart condition, would she have died at the end of the story? The internal conflict, which is the uncovering of her true feelings is more of a complication of the conflict, but nevertheless it is a problem to the story as well. Both come together as equally important.

What is the central issue of "The Story of an Hour"? What is the conflict and how is it resolved?

The central issue, or "conflict" in "The Story of an Hour" is that of woman versus society. Mrs. Mallard is a middle-class, Victorian woman living during a time period when the social expectations bestowed upon women are both repressive and limiting. They are repressive because they force women to adhere to certain rules of moralistic decorum and nearly puritan behavior that are in no way realistic, or in tune with the real wants and needs of all females. As such, women like Louise have to, essentially, play by the rules of whatever stereotypes are expected of them.

The expectations are also limiting because they constrain women to fulfill specific roles: wife, mother, daughter, nurturer, angel of the household, and natural-born entertainer to her peers.

Louise Mallard is one of these women. She is also dissatisfied and unhappy. She feels a degree of love for her husband, but something else lurks inside her: a desire for freedom that she only learns about when she hears news that her husband is dead.

Once she gets the news, she is no longer in conflict with society. A widow would be seen by Louise's society as someone who has fulfilled her "womanly duties" and can now live free from the ties of marriage.

As such, Mrs. Mallard went into a deep state of joy and emotion, thinking about all the wonderful things she could do with her life. It is quite telling that she not only sees herself as a free "woman" but as a free "human being," to the extent of even seeing nature change right in front of her:

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life.

The problem that ensues with Mrs. Mallard, who has a heart condition, is that her husband is not really dead. It is discovered that he came in on a different train from work, and he is alive as ever.

The pressure of going back to the previous state of mind, before she finally felt free and alive, was too much for Louise. Hence, the situation is "resolved" when she suffers from what seems to be a heart attack, that happens as a result of the news.

Ironically, she is thought to have died of a "joy that kills," that is, of happiness for knowing that her husband is still alive. The reality is that the shock of going back to a marriage of servitude and fakery was too much, after tasting the potential benefits of freedom.

What is the central issue of "The Story of an Hour"? What is the conflict and how is it resolved?

The central issue of "The Story of an Hour" is the emergence of a woman feeling freedom and independence, perhaps for the first time in her adult life. As the story begins, Louise Mallard learns of her husband's death. She immediately weeps uncontrollably and then retires to her room alone. After sobbing and calming down a bit, she begin to have an "awakening" (to quote another of Chopin's titles). 

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. 

The narrator continues describing vibrant images and events that Louise is witnessing. This next line expresses Louise's transition or metamorphosis from dependent wife to free woman: 

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. 

Louise had been repressed in her marriage to Brently. This is not to say that he was a bad husband. But Louise had felt pressured to perform the duties of a loyal wife. She felt trapped in this old fashioned role and felt trapped in being dependent on her husband. And note that the story was written in 1891 when women were much more oppressed by their husbands and society in general. (For instance, at this time, women could not yet vote.) When Louise gets over her initial grief, that inherent strength begins to surface and she is filled with the joy of freedom. When Brently returns, her roller coaster of emotions ranging from grief to absolute joy to complete shock is too much for her heart. And although the last line indicates that the doctors determined she died of "joy that kills," she may have died from a disappointment that kills. 

The initial conflict in the story is Brently's supposed death. The subsequent resolution would be the family dealing with it. But the actual conflict in the story is a much broader social issue. The conflict is the inequality of the two genders. In other words, the conflict has to do with the historical oppression of women. Even in this story, where there is no indication of a bad marriage, Louise has always felt trapped and oppressed, forced into a role she did not want or maybe even choose. Perhaps she wanted to work but Brently would not allow it or the society they lived in was just too traditional and she felt compelled to be a housewife. In any case, she felt trapped. This conflict is resolved momentarily with her brief experience of freedom. This conflict is reintroduced when Brently returns, and with her death, it remains unresolved; just as the struggle (especially in 1891) for women's rights had remained unresolved. 

What is the conflict in "The Story of an Hour"?

The conflict in "The Story of an Hour" is internal. That is, the conflict is between Louise's sense of duty as a wife and her sudden feeling of release and freedom on learning of her husband's death. In a sense, this news reveals to Louise the tremendous burden she has been living under in her marriage; when she realizes she is free of it, it is as if she is transformed into another person. A world of opportunity opens before her.

Yet, even as Louise feels this sudden and unexpected joy, she feels torn about its meaning. Her husband was not a bad man, and Louise reflects that she had "sometimes" loved him; her tears at his death are genuine. But what his death has revealed is that even a "good" marriage is a kind of prison; she reflects that now,

there would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.

No one will live for her now; Louise will "live for herself."

The sudden return of her husband, alive and well, crystalizes these internal feelings. Now that Louise has felt the freedom of being released from marriage, the idea of returning to married life is unthinkable. The conflict between who she has mistakenly believed she is (a free person) and the person her husband's arrival makes her into again (a wife) is too much. Her death by heart attack is attributed to the shock of sudden joy at seeing her husband, but in truth, her husband's return crushes the hope she had for freedom.

What is the conflict in "The Story of an Hour"?

Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" concerns the thoughts and emotions of Mrs. Louise Mallard in the hour after hearing of her husband Brently's sudden death. All the action of the plot takes place within Louise, including the conflict and its resolution.

When Louise is first informed of Brently's death, she exhibits the appropriate emotional response of horror and grief:

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms.

Once she recovers from her initial outburst, she retires to her room to try and process this cataclysm in private. As a married woman at the turn of the 20th century, Louise depends on her husband in many ways. She has been socialized since birth to do so, and has always prioritized Brently's wants and needs above her own. As she sits in her bedroom, listlessly contemplating a life without Brently, the energy and attention she has heretofore focused on him now seem to have no object.

At this point, the conflict arises. Louise has expended her immediate grief, and begins to feel a strange sort of anxiety as her thoughts turn from Brently towards the future:

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

Louise strives to fend off the imminent revelation, sensing that it will upset her entire worldview, but despite her efforts, the knowledge bursts in on her consciousness that she is no longer beholden to her husband—or to anyone. Now that Brently has died, Louise's time and energy are her own to do with as she pleases. She has an entire future ahead of her which is hers to shape and enjoy. She is aware that this is an inappropriate reaction to the death of a loved one, but she cannot seem to help herself:

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

The conflict is thus between Louise's mandatory reaction as a woman in her society, and her actual feelings about Brently's death. Her social setting demands that she, as a woman, be devastated by the loss of her man, and diminished without him. Louise feels instead that she has been freed from a kind of captivity, and will finally be able to know her own worth. She resolves the conflict within herself by determining to seize this opportunity to spread her wings. Her newly-spread swings are then clipped by Brently's sudden reappearance, which gives the story its cruel irony.

What is the conflict in "The Story of an Hour"?

The central conflict in Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" is between the main character, Louise Mallard, and society. 

The story begins when Louise's sister, Josephine, is attempting to gently break the news of Mr. Mallard's death in a train accident to Louise.  "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance.  She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms" and then retreats, alone, to her room.  From this, we can know that Louise is unlike most women of her society because she did not respond as other women have to this same news.

Though her sister fears that she may be doing herself harm, Louise is actually engaged in much different behavior: she notices

the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life.  The delicious breath of rain was in the air [....].  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 [...].

Instead of grieving her dead husband, remembering their life together, mourning the death of his love, Louise is, instead, noticing all the signs of life around her.  She whispers the words, "free, free, free!" and "did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her."  We can understand now that Louise is actually happy, not grieving.  She's not happy her husband is dead, per se, but she is happy for her acquisition of a freedom she could never have possessed while he was alive.

It is not that she didn't love him.  She did...sometimes.  And he loved her.  "She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead."  There was no conflict between them, and he was not a tyrannical husband.  However, "she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that that would belong to her absolutely." 

Louise didn't take issue with her husband, in particular, but the institution of marriage in this time period (the 1890s), in general.  She was the legal property of her husband, with no rights or legal identity of her own, while he lived.  The narrator even tells us that the lines of her face "bespoke repression."  Louise could not be her own person.  Her purpose, while her husband lived, was to be his wife, to bend her will to his, to compromise.  Now, she will be able to follow her own will, to do just as she pleases when she pleases.  Readers can see now that the conflict is not between Mr. and Mrs. Mallard, but it is rather between Mrs. Mallard and society, along with all of society's expectations and limitations of a married woman. Mr. Mallard is only a representative of those expectations.

What is the conflict in "The Story of an Hour"?

"The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin primarily deals with Mrs. Mallard's discovery that her husband has just died.  Chopin's story addresses a conflict between the societal expectations for women's roles and Mrs. Mallard's own personal desires for freedom and self-expression.  The reader experiences almost the entire story through Mrs. Mallard's hopes and thoughts upon hearing the news of her husband's untimely death, and her joy that she may now live "free, free, free!"

Mrs. Mallard lives in a time of strict social conventions, and she has felt controlled and dominated by her husband her entire marriage.  After she learns of his demise, her feelings are celebratory, and she imagines the many things she many do and see now that he is gone. 

Chopin resolves this conflict unhappily for Mrs. Mallard when the character dies of a heart attack after learning that her husband has not died after all.

In the short story "The Story of an Hour," what are the conflicts between two of the characters in the story?

In Kate Chopin’s very short story, “The Story of an Hour,” most of the action takes place internally in the thoughts of Mrs. Mallard, a young woman who has just learned of her husband’s death in a railroad disaster.

Most of the interpersonal conflict is only hinted at, and it takes place primarily between Mrs. Mallard and her husband, although one could argue that, in her desire to be free and beholden to nobody, Mrs. Mallard’s chief conflict is with a society that would practically require a woman take a husband and be chained forever to a domestic lifestyle. Mrs. Mallard feels enormous relief and even joy when she learns she is free of her husband.

A smaller conflict is between Mrs. Mallard and her sister, Josephine, but again this is also mostly internal. It’s clear that Josephine thinks her sister is locked in her room experiencing grief, when it is largely the exact opposite emotion that she’s feeling. Again, this interpersonal conflict points to the larger societal conflict that Mrs. Mallard is experiencing.

In the short story "The Story of an Hour," what are the conflicts between two of the characters in the story?

There are many conflicts in Chopin's short story "The Story of an Hour." While the greatest conflict is seen within the main character of Mrs. Mallard (her internal conflict with being a woman who had been unable to be free from the constraints of an oppressive marriage), there are conflicts between her and other characters.

One example of an external conflict (man v. man) in the story is the relationship between Mrs. Mallard and her husband. She obviously feels oppressed by him. She has aged prematurely, feels as if she has no freedom, and feels like a prisoner in her own home. It is not until she is told of the death of her husband that she feels she has escaped from his oppression.

Another example of external conflict in the text is between Mrs. Mallard and her sister. While her sister wishes to help her grieve the news of her husband's death, Mrs. Mallard does not allow it. Mrs. Mallard forces her sister away in order to allow herself to contemplate the death on her own.