Gender Roles In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

“He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother's place to look after children, whose on earth was it” (Chopin 5)? In The Awakening, Edna’s husband Leonce directs his wife’s attention to his displeasure with her lack of responsibility for their children to display his dominance as a man in the Victorian Era. Although biologically Edna is a mother; she finds it hard to be a motherly woman without giving up her own set of personal beliefs and values entirely. Kate Chopin uses setting, characterization, and symbolism in The Awakening to show how gender roles force both men and women to conform to the stereotypes within society and the difficulty involved in doing so.

Mrs. Pontellier develops a lack of respect for the traditional standards applied to women in the Victorian Era. The Pontellier vacation to Grand Isle, Louisiana brings forth many eye-opening experiences for Edna as she meets many people of different values than she previously had. Edna swims in the sea with her newly made

The ideal characteristics of a mother and wife are found in women who become inferior to their husbands. The women allow the dominance of the husband to control the household. However this submissive behavior is due to the fact that by acting this way their lives contain less conflict. “They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels” (Chopin 8). Adele is known to be one of the ideal women of the time period due to the amount dedication she provides for her family. As an inattentive mother figure as well as a wife that lacks affection for her husband, Edna struggles to break the gender role of a mother-woman. After describing the