Social Expectations In Kate Chopin's The Great Awakening

The women of this movement were fighting for something they believed they deserve. Because of the Seneca Falls Convention and the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolution, women were able to express their own opinions. The women’s rights movement led to many different events, impacted other countries, and created a new amendment. The feminist efforts in the mid 1800s were successful enough to allow women to take on occupations and educations they weren’t able to obtain

“I Want a Wife” Rhetorical Analysis In an essay by Judy Brady, the author asserts that husbands (men) expects their wives to cater to their every need; therefore, she too wants a wife to do the same for her. Brady supports her claim first by explaining how a wife should keep track of household duties; second, by explaining how the wife should take care of physical needs; and third by explaining how a wife must satisfy sexual needs. Brady’s purpose is to illuminate the hardships of the perfect wife in order to raise consciousness for women's equality and create social change in American society. Based on her purposeful use of anaphora, catalogue, and pathos, Brady is writing for the feminist community of 1972 so that they may speed the word

The women began to notice that if they were trying to teach their family pure morals inside of the home and then continued to send their family into the dark and wretched world, they were only digressing. This new idea started what we now know as, the Public Sphere. Women felt that it was their jobs to fix problems for people such as slaves, widows, drunks and many other immoral groups (Ginzberg 10). The Public Sphere of women was simply the idea that the rest of our world needed to be reformed into a moral place to ensure that our families would be positively influenced. This change from the domestic sphere to the public sphere showed a change in women’s influence on religion and social aspects of the early American society.

Symbols of Freedom: Sea and Birds in “The Awakening” Chopin challenges the gender roles expectations imposed on married women during the nineteenth century in her novel, “The Awakening.” The main protagonist, Edna, initially symbolizes the conventional woman; she is married to Leonce Pontellier and they have two children. Later, at Grand Isle, she experiences dissatisfaction with her life and marriage. Edna experiences a stirring in her soul that exposes contradictions between her natural self and “gendered” self. She wants to break free from social norms that bind her to motherhood, and this is her natural self in conflict with her “gendered” identity. To be free, however, is not always an easy choice to pursue.

During the 1890’s until today, the roles of women and their rights have severely changed. They have been inferior, submissive, and trapped by their marriage. Women have slowly evolved into individuals that have rights and can represent “feminine individuality”. The fact that they be intended to be house-caring women has changed. This shows a balance between gender roles, as well as the embracing progressive changes within culture and society.

In The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Edna seeks peace and happiness through finding where she fits among other characters and by avoiding the negative effects that people have on her by isolating herself. Edna Pontellier, a young mother in New Orleans is married to a very successful proud man, Mr. Pontellier and together they have 2 sons. As a family they go on vacations to Grand Isle, where Edna meets Robert a secret love interest, and begins to learn that her unhappiness is rooted in her responsibilities as a mother and wife. Throughout the novel, Chopin uses Edna’s reliance on other characters, such as Mr. Pontellier, and their reliance on her, to regulate her happiness. Change occurs when Edna realizes that her happiness will only come when she is separate from society, but she eventually understands that she cannot do this in the life she is living and chooses to simply stop living it.

He then is gone for a while but sends letters to Madame Reisz confessing his love for Edna. After Edna’s awakenings, and her moving houses, Robert does indeed come back, but he does not tell Edna. This action alone played a huge role to Enda’s suicide. The love of her life was seen with another woman, and has been in town for two

Edna outwardly conforms to society’s expectations by marriage. In the novel, Edna often feels like her marriage was a misfortune. For example, Edna believes,

Gender roles in the 1900s were expectations that society had to follow in order to have balance. However, women were the ones who carried the weight of the load in the family. In the article "I Want a Wife" by Judy Brady gave an overview of the expectations women had to undergo in society. A wife had to to keep everything in check from the care of the children to having everything prepared and ready, and filling the needs of everyone else.

Women are not told often enough that they need to accept who they are as a person, and are more often than not forced into feeling as if they need to change who they are as a person to make people happy. “Understand yourself, and do not hide anything. It’s your outlook on life that allows you to survive and live well.” (A Century of Women) Females need to understand this quote, so they are able to take on life, and prepare themselves for the future they envision rather than cowering down to standards society constructs and changing who they are because of those