What are the elements of fiction that are most available/recurrent in this story ?"The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin

In Kate Chopin's masterful short story, "The Story of an
Hour," subtle foreshadowing and irony are certainly recurrent elements.  Environment as
a reflection is also employed by Chopin in parts of the
story.

Chopin's opening line, "Knowing that Mrs. Mallard
was afflicted with a heart trouble...." hints at a weakness of the heart that may cause
her problems when she learns of the death of her husband.  The irony here is subtly
hidden by Chopin's use of the article a.  For, as the reader later
learns, the heart trouble is not physical, but rather spiritual:  Mrs. Mallard's spirit
has been repressed for all the years of her marriage.

In
the second paragraph, again foreshadowing and irony pair together as Chopin
writes,

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.  When the storm of grief had spent itself whe went away to her room
alone.  She would have no one follow
her.

The word
abandonment is ironic since the reader may infer that Mrs. Mallard
feels abandoned.  Later, of course, the reader realizes that Mrs. Mallard lets her
emotions free after so many years of repression.  Also, she wishes to be alone so that
she can digest the idea of her newly realized freedom, not that she wishes to mourn by
herself.

It is while she is alone in her room that the
environment acts as a reflection of Mrs. Mallard's inner moods.  That she can see the
"tops of trees" suggests that Mrs. Mallard can now look to the future.  And, the
internal changes taking place in her are mirrored by what she sees as she faces the open
window in her room:

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The delicious breath of rain was in the
air....The notes of a distant song ....patches of blue sky showing here and there...in
the west

The idea of being
free is "delicious" to her; the song and blue sky reflect her lightness of heart as she
looks to the west, a symbol of the rest of her life.

The
irony and foreshadowing of the original use of abandonment is
confirmed as, after Mrs. Mallard begins "to recognize this thing that was approaching to
possess her," Chopin writes,

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When she abandoned herslf a little whispered word
escaped her slightly parted lips...."free, free, free!"....Her pulses beat fast, and the
coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her
body.

Here, too, the reader
discerns that the "heart trouble" of Mrs. Mallard has not been physical at all.  Rather,
it has been a result of her stultifying marriage.

Again,
irony and foreshadowing recur as Mrs. Mallard
breathes

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

The front door is
opened with a latchkey by Brently Mallard, "travel-stained,...carrying his umbrella." 
Mrs. Mallard, caught under his rule again, as symbolized by the umbrella, dies of
repression, "heart disease--of joy that kills."  In these final words, the foreshadowing
of earlier paragraphs and the irony and the reflective environment find their
culmination.