Has the conclusion been anticipated by you as a reader? Did you think of another more suitable one ?"The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin

Because there is much foreshadowing in this story, a close
reading--and, certainly, a second one--will detect the hints that lead to the denouement
of "The Story of an Hour."  For instance, in the first sentence, Chopin suggests that
Mrs. Mallard's health is precarious, but it also creates an ambiguity about what really
troubles Mrs. Mallard: 

readability="7">

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with
a heart trouble, great care
was taken to break to her as gently as possible the new of her husband's
death.

It strikes the reader
odd that Chopin employs the article a. Had she written "heart
trouble," the reader could assume that the problem is physical; however, with the
addition of the indefinite article [a], the condition of one of some kind; the reader
does not know whether the problem is physical of one of the
spirit. 

Another example of foreshadowing in the exposition
of Chopin's story, one that Mr. Mallard may not be dead is in the
line,

He had
only taken the time to assure himself of its [the telegram]
truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall
any less careful, less tender frined in bearing the sad
message.

Nevertheless, the
masterful use of irony and purposely constructed sentences in the passive voice create
an ambiguity that results in the cautious reader's yet being surprised at the ending. 
Critic Madonne M. Miner argues in her essay,"Veiled Hints:  An Affective Stylist's
Reading of Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour'," that the story's theme of autonomy and
identity are undermined by its grammatical structure.  For instance, many sentences
begin with the word there, a word that is somewhat vague. And, the
repeated use of she rather than Mrs. Mallard's name distances the
reader from a particular subject.  The passive constructions indicate that Mrs. Mallard
does not "possess" her feelings, but is instead "possessed" by them.  Even the first
sentence is in passive voice.  Therefore, with the reader distanced from the story, the
question of "a heart trouble" is mitigated, and  readers only return to the idea after
reading the "surprise ending" that they should have anticipated, after all.  For, it is
the final irony among many, a "joy that kills."

Kate
Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" is a skillfully written story whose ending is absolutely
suitable, given the clever and subtle devices employed by the author to develop her
theme of feminine repression in the Victorian Age and its consequences.  Mrs. Mallard's
heart condition is a result of her surpressed desires, her repression.  When she
finally believes that she can be her own person, released from her subjugation to her
husband, and she emerges a "new" woman only to learn that she must return to the prison
of her repression, her spirit dies.