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The Stereotype Of Victorian Women In The Awakening By Kate Chopin

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Many authors are able to show the theme of life through their characters and lifestyles. Some show the characters in a stereotype for their time period to pass along a deeper meaning of the character 's emotions and actions as the novel progresses. In the novel The Awakening by Kate Chopin, the stereotype of Victorian women is shown to demoralize women and place them in a life filled with standards to follow.

Women in the nineteenth century (1801- 1900) were given expectations that they had to meet in order to be the ideal woman. The Awakening by Kate Chopin takes place during 1899, which was still a time where those standards were heavily endorsed. Some may even say it is the life a woman was born to follow. ʺNotes on The Cult of Domesticity and True Womanhood,ʺ Professor Catherine Lavender, Prepared for Students in HST 386: Women in the City, 1998. This magazine written for women by men detailed the many standards a society had for a woman. It began with the banishment of education for woman, it was said to lead them away from their true religion, their home. Proof behind this is this quote directly from it, "The early womenʹs seminaries and academies, which were under attack for leading women astray from their true purpose and task in life, promised that far from taking women away from religion, they would make of young women handmaidens of God, efficient auxiliaries in the great task of renovating the world." Continuing on, the woman of the time was seen as nothing

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