Chopin’s The Storm and The Story of an Hour tell stories of events and choices that would certainly be considered immoral from a religious or traditionalist perspective. As such, it would be difficult to label the characters responsible for these immoral choices as “heroes” in the traditional sense.

Chopin had, however, largely pioneered a new definition of what it means to be a hero—a “modernist representation of the realistic heroine” which differentiates from “the idealistic portrayals of the male hero” (Azad 22). Within The Storm, Calixta decides to reignite an old love affair while her husband is away. Ultimately, however, Calixta decides that this affair shall not continue past this one encounter, and has Alcée leave before they can be discovered together. The latter decision to end the affair as abruptly as it had begun provides Calixta with the label of realist hero because that decision saved Alcée’s marriage as well as her own.

Louise Mallard in Chopin’s The Story of an Hour is similarly faced with a difficult choice brought on by a similarly difficult set of circumstances. Having learned of her husband’s passing led Mallard to choose between grieving and celebrating, of which she had ultimately chosen the latter. Mallard saw the prospect of freedom and independence to come as a result of her husband’s death as worth celebrating. It is far more difficult to label Mallard a realist hero, as her choice to celebrate had subsequently led to Mallard’s death via a heart attack—surely contrary to one of the realist hero’s objectives of physical survival.

However, the fact that Mallard had made a choice which essentially guaranteed her emotional survival if not for this tragic physical event is ultimately what constitutes labelling her a realist hero of the same degree as Calixta in The Storm.