The awakening

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Recommended: Gender roles of women in literature

Lack of Independence

During the late nineteenth century, the time of protagonist Edna Pontellier, a woman's place in society was restricted to caring for her children and submitting to her husband. Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, covers the frustrations and the success in a woman's life as they attempt to cope with these strict cultural demands. It supports and encourages feminism as a way for women to obtain freedom, financial independence, and individual identity. Challenging the stereotype of a Victorian women, Edna Pontellier battles the pressures of 1899 that command her to be a devoted housewife who subdues to her husband.

In the society that Creole women lived in, they were fit to be only a wife and mother. In The Awakening, Victorian Creole women were to be loving mothers and a wife dedicated to making those they loved happy. During that time in Louisiana, women were their husbands property and once married, they should be a devoted and a dutiful wife. In the book, Adele Ratignolle is the perfect Creole woman. Kate Chopin never indicates that Adele has other interest or passions other than being a housewife. Adele idolizes her children and her husband, she centers her life around caring for them and fulfilling her domestic duties around the house. That was expected from women during that time. Even though Adele appears to be proper, she also portrays Creole manners. Her self-image was based on material and how she looked; she relies completely on her beauty and ability to attract people with charm, “There was nothing subtle or hidden about her charms; her beauty was all there, flaming and apparent” (Chopin, 17). Mademoiselle Reisz was the opposite of Adele, she was someone who followed her own desires and ...

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... decides to drown herself in the ocean. While swimming farther and farther out in the ocean she thinks "of Leonce and the children. They were a part of her life. But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul" (Chopin 114). No matter what she is capable of, Edna believes society just could not accept her new, 'awakened' state.

Society was the strongest force that attempted to mold Edna Pontellier into the woman that was “acceptable” in the society, but through her suicide, Edna is finally able escape this controlling life. Leonce and society owned her soul, telling her to be subservient, to tend house, adore her children and keep up appearances, but it was her children, Raoul and Etienne who imprisoned her body, reminding her constantly of the torture of motherhood. It was her desire for individuality and freedom that led her to her death

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