Abstract

• This research deals with a transitivity analysis of The Story of an Hour written by an American feminist author Kate Chopin. The objectives of this research are to investigate the types of transitivity processes used in the story, and to examine how transitivity choices in the story reflect the ideology of the author. Dependent and independent clauses in the story were analysed by using Halliday’s (2014) model of transitivity system. Moreover, the clauses were also sorted into agent and agentless clauses to determine the extent of agency given to human characters. The results of the transitivity analysis were then examined to detect the author’s ideological influence on the portrayal of the characters, particularly the main character. The findings showed that mental and behavioural clauses are the most frequent clauses. The least frequent clauses were material clauses. Throughout the story, Chopin focused on portraying the change of flow of events in the consciousness of the main character by using mental and behavioural clauses, the use of agentless clauses, agent-like agent clauses, and inanimate agent clauses suggests that human characters were given limited agency. Notably, only about half of animate agent clauses had the main character, Louise Mallard, as the agent, implying that despite being the main character, she was given limited control over her actions and surroundings. This research proved that transitivity choices reflect the author’s ideology and perspective.