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Oppression In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

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Each of the protagonists meet an end due to their respective obsessions, which offer death and total mental disassemblement, both of which effectively destroy the character that receives them. Edna died reflecting on life and the struggles that would forever haunt her if she had chosen not to end her life. As she was swimming farther into the sea, “Edna heard her father’s voice and her sister Margaret’s. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. ” (Chopin 153). Edna chose to end her life because of what she saw for herself in the future: an endless, futile struggle against the patriarchy and her family duties. She reflected on her bittersweet relationships, which allowed for her to clarify her reasons for dying and ensure she was …show more content…

“The children appeared before her like antagonists who had overcome her; who had overpowered and sought to drag her into the soul’s slavery for the rest of her days. But she knew a way to elude them”(Chopin 151). As she realized the extent of the strain her children would put on her identity, Edna determined that she would never let her children take her life while she would still live. As she reflects on this notion, swimming into the ocean, she reviews her half-hearted relationship with her husband, and all of the other men she had fancied throughout her years, realizing the absurdity of the cycle she trapped herself in.Her obsession with the sea allowed for her to be free at last. The narrator trapped in the yellow room was in no mental state to reflect, however. Nearing the end of the story, her mind has deteriorated to the level of incomprehension, preventing her from properly assessing her situation. “I don’t like to LOOK out of the windows even – there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come of of that wall-paper as I did?”

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