Women And Sexual Freedoms In Kate Chopin's The Awakening '

Females in the late 1800s were expected to know their place in society and stay within parameters that were set by the population. These parameters including being a perfect mother figure, and needing a husband to provide a place to live, food, and money for spending. This meant that females were not culturally allowed to be free. This idea was so ingrained in the culture that the influential female writers of the time wrote stories where the wife was wrong and returned to her husband after she sought freedom. These stories came to an end when Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening in 1899. The Awakening attacks the cultural lack of rights and freedoms for females, specifically the sexual freedoms that females do not have. The novella describes

Women were considered to be purer than men, therefore it was more holy for females to partake in coitus than it was for man. This also caused for the social idea that women were not sexual beings and that only men could, have sexual desires. Being left alone in solitude to examine herself, Edna has become confused, warring with herself about love, and her own sexual desires that she keeps hidden from the world. Since her husband left, Edna has been spending time at the race tracks where she meets Arobin, an attractive married man. Arobin has become fond of Edna’s beauty, and constantly abandons his wife to have dinner and watch races with Edna. One night after a dinner Edna brings Arobin back into her home where he leans in and kisses her, “she clasped his head, holding his lips to hers… It was a flaming torch that kindled desire.” (61). The word choice that is used describe this scene can easily be interpreted as being more than a kiss. Elaine Showalter, writer of the essay Tradition and the Female Talent: The Awakening as a Solitary Book, describes how, “[Edna’s] affair with Arobin shocks her into awareness of her own sexual passions, it leaves her illusions about love intact.” (184). Edna’s “illusions about love” are those feelings that she has for Robert that she cannot let go of. Edna cries the night after her affair with Arobin because she is upset and confused about how she let someone whom she does not love inflame her sexually, and it does not end that night it continues on throughout the rest of the story. Her lustful desires tend to confuse Edna eventually leading to her committing