An Analysis Of Kate Chopin's Feminist At Home In The Awakening

The rise of the Women’s Movement during 1890’s encouraged many to grant all human beings the same fundamental rights despite one's gender. Traditionally, sexual passion, in a woman's aspect of life, was considered inappropriate and wrong in societal views. Yet, Chopin boldly addresses sexual desire in a woman with a strong feminist tone in The Storm, empowering female sexuality.

In the late 1800s, nearly all women were viewed as subservient, inferior, second class females that lived their lives in a patriarchal and chauvinist society. Women often had no voice, identity, or independence during that time period. Moreover, women dealt with the horrors of social norms and the gender opposition of societal norms. The primary focus and obligation for a woman to obtain during the 1800s was to serve her husband and to obey to anything he said. Since women were not getting the equality, freedom, or independence that they desired, Kate Chopin, an independent-minded female American novelist of the late 1800s expressed the horrors, oppressions, sadness, and oppositions that women of that time period went through. Her works focused

It is common for people in everyday society to conform to society’s expectations while also questioning their true desires. In the novel, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, the main protagonist Edna Pontellier is said to possess, "That outward existence which conforms, the inward life that questions." In other words, Edna outwardly conforms while questioning inwardly. Kate Chopin, uses this tension between outward conformity and inward questioning to build the meaning of the novel by examining Edna’s role as a wife, mother, and as nontraditional woman in the traditional Victorian period.

While being a woman in modern times is difficult enough with all of our adversities, one can truly appreciate the strength of a woman in 1899. The Awakening by Kate Chopin is a short intimate novel about a woman named Edna who slowly registered her individuality. In the beginning of the novel Edna was glimpsed as a woman of her time, maintaining the societal appearance with her husband and children. However, later on in the novel she surpassed her time by defying the norm and taking the “unknown road” toward independence as a result of her awakenings. The course of Edna’s awakenings was very emotional, unexpected and unfamiliar.

This novel, The Awakening, is about a woman named Edna Pontellier learns to think of herself as an independent human being. Also, Edna Pontellier refuses to obey against the social norms by leaving her husband Leónce Pontellier and having an affair with Robert Lebrun. Kate Chopin describes societal expectations and the battle of fitting the mold of motherhood in the Awakening by how Edna Pontellier and Adele Ratignolle contribute to their family in different ways. Edna Pontellier’s attitude toward motherhood is that she is not a perfect mother-women. Adele Ratignolle’s attitude toward motherhood is that she is a perfect mother-women.

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, fits into a feminist lens as the text is greatly affected by the way the characters from the book are expected to act. Each character’s role correlates with their gender, and how a person of their gender is supposed to behave during the late 1800s. Women were treated unequal to men, and because of this, husbands were very oppressive to their wives as evidenced by the way Leonce treats Edna. The characters in this book are expected to submit and act according to their gender roles; in other words, males being dominant and females being subordinate. In the beginning of the text, this is the way Edna behaves; however, she transforms throughout the book and becomes a very different person as she breaks away from society’s

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening was written at the end of the nineteenth century, where many roles for women began to change; therefore, the it appears to have been a turning point for females (“The Role of the Wife and Mother”). These changes in female roles were mostly due to the actions of women themselves, motivated by their desires to break away from the limits imposed on their gender The nineteenth century was a critical point in time for women, in regards to their roles in society (“The Role of the Wife and Mother”). In The Awakening, Edna goes through noteworthy changes in the course of the novel, which reconstructs her into a woman who goes against societal ideals regarding motherhood and marriage .

Bryant Lockridge, Helen M. Sterk.2012, 78). Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who is one of the early pioneer of the feminist movement in the first decade of century and who is interested in the social and economic roots of women's oppression, in her books The Home: Its Work and Influence (1903) and Human Work (1941), she attacks motherhood and the domesticity of women in the early 20th century. She suggests that the liberation of women and of children and of men, for that matter requires getting women out of the house, both practically and ideologically and that that the relegation of women to roles associated with their sexual or reproductive activity is disadvantageous to their progress as individuals and as a race. Gilman was against culture which

Foremost, a question must be asked: what makes a woman a woman? Many years ago, a woman was a soft, gentle creature a man could use as a bearer of children. In fact, that seemed to be all a woman was for, and its even been thought that motherhood is an instinct, a sort of ‘Motherhood Myth’. Though, author Betty Rollins and others like her disagree. “Thanks to the Motherhood Myth,” Betty writes. “The idea that having babies is something that all normal women instinctively want and need and will enjoy doing- they just think they do.” (Rollin, Betty. "Motherhood: Who Needs It?" The Norton Reader. Ed. Linda Peterson and John Brerton. 12th ed. New York: W.w Horton, 2008. 369-377. Print.) According to her and other experts, women don’t need children.

author Kate Chopin, in her novel, The Awakening, depicts the main character Edna Pontellier. Chopin’s purpose is to portray the idea of feminism. She adopts a powerful tone in order to emphasize her story to women of all ages. Director, Mike Newell in his movie, Mona Lisa Smiles, praises the main character Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts). Newell’s purpose is to convey the discomfort and expected perfect lifestyle of women in the 1950’s. Together the novel and the movie revolves around the idea of a perfect women and feminism, it is shown through the main characters in each story, Edna and Katherine who share abounding similarities.

In the play “Othello” by William Shakespeare showed how the lies and the jealousy of others can ruin a relationship . Throughout the history of this play people have understood it as a “triad of nobility,purity, and villainy.” A literary critic, Michael Andrews noted the significance of the handkerchief that was used in the play. “Othello tells Desdemona that the handkerchief is a love-controlling talisman his mother received from an Egyptian "charmer.” The gift that Desdemona receives is used to represent a symbol of Othello’s love.

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is a piece of fiction written in the nineteenth century. The protagonist Edna is a controversial character, Edna rebels against many nineteenth - century traditions, but her close friend Adele was a perfect example in terms of a role of a woman, mother and wife at that time. Chopin uses contrast characters to highlight the difference between Adele and Edna. Although they are both married women in the nineteenth century, they also exhibit many different views about what a mother role should be.

Women’s rights have drastically improved since the 1800’s. The model of patriarchy was widely accepted as a social norm in America and many other countries until the early to mid 1900’s. Today women are still fighting the belittlement that the patriarchal model deemed acceptable. The character of the rebellious strong women is still one today that many women look up to; especially women in very oppressive middle east countries. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Chopin strives to argue social emancipation for women

Kate Chopin has been referred to as a pioneering feminist writer. Feminism is the belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way (dictionary.cambridge.org). Stemming from Feminism, is Feminist Criticism, a literary lens that “examines the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforces or undermines the economic, political, social, and psychological oppressions of women” (Tyson 83). Patriarchal attitudes dominated the minds of American people in the nineteenth century and Chopin’s work, “Desiree’s Baby”, encouraged women to look at their situations from a critical point of view, one in which women were unfairly treated because of their status as female. This essay takes a closer look at La Blanche and Desiree, two women with vastly different racial and class backgrounds who, in their own ways, are supressed by the traditional gender of the society in which they live and as a result, inadvertently conform to it.

“[The southern woman] cannot express an opinion without having [her husband] sneer it down. He ridicules her efforts at self-improvement, […] and she feels insulted and outraged” (Dix). Dorothy Dix mentions the emotional tolls taken on Southern white women caused by the patriarchal oppression of the late 1890s. In doing so, Dix creates a comparison between the external patriarchal oppression affecting southern women, and its internal emotional effects. Kate Chopin applies this comparison to her novella, The Awakening, set in the late 1890s about a southern housewife, Edna, struggling to cope with the daily patriarchal oppression from her husband, her children, her peers, her society, and herself. Although Edna experiences external patriarchal