Hysterical Screaming & Cruel Reality-A Study of The Story of An Hour from the perspective of Peirce’s Semiotic Theory

The Story of An Hour has always been regarded as the representative work of the American writer Kate Chopin. Concise in its language, the novel mainly describes the psychological changes and emotional experience of Mrs. Mallard after she was informed of her husband’s death. Since its publication, relative research on the work has usually focused on the theme, expression and narrative strategy of the novel. Seldom finds that the use of signs, an inseparable part of the text, has been applied skillfully to express the theme. Therefore, this study attempts to explore the symbolic meaning of hysterical screaming and cruel reality in The Story of an Hour by analyzing the use of signs under the theoretical framework of Peirce’s Semiotics.