The time of year is spring. It is important because in spring, everything is alive with new life and motion:
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life.
At first, Mrs. Mallard is quite still in contrast to the motion outside. She sinks into a chair after the news of her husband's death, "pressed down" by an exhaustion that seems to penetrate into her soul.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless.
It is only after the realization comes over her that she is free of her husband's control that she begins to come bodily alive, as if she undergoing a rebirth just like the spring outside her window. As she realizes she is free, she springs into motion:
. . . "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. . . . Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
As she sees all the years of her life as her own:
she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
Mrs. Mallard's thaw and movement suggest she will begin to live more fully. Unfortunately, her new life doesn't last very long. As soon as her husband comes home and she realizes she is not really free, she dies of a heart attack.
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