Oppression of Women in "The Awakening"

Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening in the opening chapter provides the argument for women's entrapment in roles that society has forced upon them. Chopin was not just trying to write an entertaining story but trying to convey arguments against these social injustices. Women are like these birds trapped in these cages unable to free themselves from these imposed roles by society.

Chopin opens her novel with the a parrot in a cage repeating the same phrase over and over. The parrot is pretty to look at, but when the bird speaks it is very annoying. This is the way women were potrayed in the late 19th century restricted to very limited space in society, --- "hung in a cage outside the door" pretty to look at, but annoying because women spoke of the same things over and over --- " [the parrot] kept repeating [the same phrases] over and over" (515). The main threads of acceptable conversation that women were to speak of were household duties, children, clothing, and meeting their husband's expectations. If women were to speak of their own wants and needs it would be --- "a language nobody understood"(515). However, plain, ordinary, and non-oramental women such as writers, old maids, widows, musicians, and artists. These unconvential women that were still acceptable company for the women on the other side of society. Spoke out for both sets of women and their individual needs --- "hung on the other side of the door, whistling [her] fluty notes out upon the breeze with maddening persistence"(515). It took these women of --- "mockingbird" (515) status to convince women of --- "parrot" (515) status that to benefit the entire species to sing the same song instead of repeating the same phrase over and over.

Mr. Ponte...

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... the top of his list as his most valuable piece of property. She is the mother to his children, sleeping partner, hostess, but not his companion or friend. To him she could never hold a conversation that would interest him.

Women were given no rights to self determination is what Chopin protests against this injustice throughout this entire story. It is one of the reoccurring themes throughout the entire novel. These roles of wife, mother, and personal property of their husband's is the cage in which all women were trapped. Women couldn't go out and earn their own money they were dependent like children on their husband's genorosity. Chopin saw the hopelessness of her and other women's self-determination at that point in history, but she protested as loudly as she could.

An Introduction to American Literature McGraw-Hill Second Edition 2002 New York