Gender Norms In The Awakening

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Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening, shows a women trying to go against gender norms in the nineteenth-century. The protagonist, Edna, is not the normal nineteenth-century woman. She is more like the normal twenty-first-century woman. For example, she refuses to be a wife and a mother. Throughout the novel, Chopin continues to examine gender relationships. Therefore, trying to create a new gender norm for women. The Awakening by Kate Chopin examines the rejection of certain gender norms by both men and women in late nineteenth-century New Orleans. The central female character, Edna, is going against natural and societal standards of being a wife. In the nineteenth-century, women are known for all the cleaning, cooking, and taking care of the children. They are even supposed to stay home on certain days due to visits of clients because of their husbands. Edna on the other case could care less about any off that. All she wants to do is find her own freedom and individuality. Edna wanted to find freedom so much that she “began to do as she liked and to feel …show more content…

Stereotypical aspects of society was the main cause for Edna suicide. Society and Mr. Pontellier own Edna, mentally and physically by telling her what to do, what to wear, and how to act. Whereas her children owned Edna’s body and made her constantly remember what nature wants women to do. Little by little, Edna changed and knew herself that those stereotypes aren’t what she wanted. She wanted to be free to do what she wants, when she wants. Robert and Alcée on the other hand were different from Edna. They still cared about what society thought. Robert did not stay with Edna because she was a taken woman. While Alcée chose to kiss a married woman, but dropped her when someone new came along. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin can be considered one of the first real books towards

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