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The Struggle For Independence In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

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In the story, The Awakening, the author; Kate Chopin writes about a woman named Edna Pontellier who is stuck in a time and a society that focuses on women having jobs of only being a wife and a good mother, nothing more nothing less; and in the meantime she is still trying to figure out her life and what she really wants. Kate chopin effectively ended the book the way she did to get her reader to question whether Edna has gained a victory or a loss of her struggle for independence.
The plot at the end of the story is that Edna Pontellier kills herself by walking into the ocean and drowning herself. There are several big meanings behind the way in which the story ended the way it did. To begin with, towards the middle of the book is when the reader starts to see Edna’s personality shift to more rebellious and see her morals change. One example of when the reader starts to see this is, “His business is worth a good, round sum to me. You’d better write her a note.”(page 51) This is about a conversation between Edna and her husband Mr. Pontellier in which Mr. Pontellier is arguing with Edna about how she is harming his business by her abandoning her callers. This shows not only that her and Mr. pontellier’s priorities are no longer compatible, but that she is starting to become careless and …show more content…

She ended the book this way to have the reader question whether it was a win or loss for Edna wanting to have independence. I believe that this is a feminist text because it discusses a woman that tries to live without judgement and tries to not conform to society’s norms of women not being able to achieve greater things and just sticking to staying home. This whole process that Edna Pontellier goes through is what the “awakening” is, in which she’s slowly doing some self discovery and realizing that this is not the life she

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