Equality In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

Analysis of The Awakening

In the 1800s, there were problems with equality between men and women. Women always had to do what the men told them to do. It seemed as if women did not have their own voice. They were expected to be stay-at-home wives, while their husbands went to work. There were certain things that women could not do, but men could. Kate Chopin believed women should have the right to live their life how they want to. Influenced from meeting women and family deaths, Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening about a woman who is longing for independence during a time of women having to stay at home.

Katherine O’Flaherty was born in 1850 to a St. Louis couple, Eliza and Thomas O’Flaherty (“The Awakening” 46). When Chopin was a child, she

was known as St. Louis “Little Rebel” because she took down and hid a Union Flag (“The Awakening” 46). She married a Creole, Oscar Chopin of Louisiana in June 1870 (Davis). Chopin got educated and “went to the Sacred Heart Academy, a Catholic Boarding School in St. Louis, where she excelled in academics and won may awards for her achievements” (Pearson and Rice). Through her writing career, Chopin had a “few friends [who] encouraged her to write professionally” (“The Awakening” 46), so she decided to write stories that challenged and conflicted with society’s standards. Two of her first new stories, “Wiser than a God” and “A Point at Issue” were written and published in 1889 (Davis). At Fault, Bayou Folk, and A Night in Acadie are other works that Chopin has written (Pearson and Rice). From her writings, Kate Chopin “was perceived as local color writer, but her literary qualities were discounted” (“Kate”). In 1882, her husband died from swamp fever, so she moved back to St. Louis with her seven children to support the family “by writing short stories and novels that related to the lives of people in New Orleans” (Pearson and Rice). Throughout her life, being surrounded by society she lived in influenced her beliefs, in which she used to write The Awakening.
Her book, The Awakening, has become well known many years later, after it was published in 1899.

After the novel was published, “the content and message of The Awakening caused an uproar and Chopin was denied admission into her St. Louis Fine Art Club based on its publication” (Wyatt). Her main character Edna Pontellier went against society and decided her own life, which most people did not agree with. The content of the novel is what caused it to be banned from certain libraries. Because the novel created chaos, it “remained unnoticed for several years after the commotion it initially caused” (“The Awakening” 57). People during Chopin’s time did not agree with how The Awakening was written, but it influenced women to stand up for their independence. Chopin was disappointed that the novel did not get the attention that she had wanted it to. In the novel, Edna went against society, so her “actions reflect the times and the emotions felt by many women who sought personal freedom” (“The Awakening” 55). Her actions caused women to stand up and fight for their rights and freedom. The novel caused a commotion, which nobody really wanted and they did not appreciate how Edna chose her own journey instead of sticking with society. Later in the 1930s, The Awakening was brought back after literary critics changed their minds about the novel (“The Awakening” 57). Critics have decided to bring back the book after many years of it being unnoticed. Even though the novel was noticed years later, Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening based on her beliefs of society. The novel fits in with what society would be because her beliefs in the novel took place ahead of her time

period.
From studying Chopin’s life and reading The Awakening, there is a connection between the author’s life and the female protagonist. Kate Chopin met a woman who had a successful career, so she later “behaved in ways to show that she believed in women having control over her own life” (“The Awakening” 46). The meeting with the woman made Chopin feel excited because the lady was a woman living her own life how she wanted to. Chopin decided to create a character similar to the woman that she has met in her own lifetime. In the late 1860s, before Kate Chopin met a woman that she was very fond, to which her main character Edna, who was “very fond of music [and] sometimes liked to sit in her room of mornings when Madame Ratignolle played or practiced” (Chopin 33). When Chopin got older, she “exemplified the spirit of the women’s movement” by helping “her husband with his business, taking walks by herself...and smoking cigarettes” (“The Awakening” 56). Chopin wrote The Awakening to express her beliefs on women being able to own their life. She did what women were not supposed to do, which was out of the ordinary of being a stay-at-home house wife. Her actions influenced her to write her novel, which then influenced the women’s rights movement.
The Awakening not only reflects Chopin’s life, but also her belief for women’s independence. Her novel was praised by critics “for its daring treatment of traditional gender roles as they were defined at the turn of the century, and for its exploration of a woman’s search for self-fulfillment” (“The Awakening” 58). She wrote this novel to break the tradition of gender roles by explaining how a woman has her own mind and makes her own decisions. It influenced many other women to search for independence. In one part of the novel, Edna Pontellier began to “realize her position in the universe as a human being and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her” (Chopin 17). Trying to find herself, Edna realized that she is her own person, which impacted other women to become their own person. Through Edna’s journey of escaping and becoming her own person “strikes a chord in many readers in large part because she had the strength to act, to take control of her destiny” (“The Awakening” 61). Edna, the female protagonist, took control over her own life. The character’s actions inspired other readers to control their own lives. There were times in the novel where Edna’s husband upset her by not allowing her to do such things, so she threw her wedding ring onto the floor, but she “could not help but think that it was very foolish, very childish, to have stamped upon her wedding...She began to do as she liked and to feel as she liked” (Chopin 74). Even though Edna realized that her actions were childish, she then realized that she was able to feel and do as she pleases. Within the novel, Kate Chopin has the narrative set in Edna’s point of view because she was the character who was discovering herself and Chopin wanted to make sure the reader did not miss the importance of Edna’s actions:
Chopin takes great pains to assure that the reader does not miss the importance of this “beginning of things” that is taking place inside Edna's head, as it represents Edna's first steps on the road toward self-discovery and away from the restrictions of the gender roles which were prescribed for turn-of-the-century women. Chopin makes use of repetition, often of entire sentences or paragraphs, to point out important events in the narrative. (Green)
Through Chopin’s novel, readers have received the message to become independent and their own person. Because Chopin uses repetition throughout her novel, she wanted to make sure the readers understood her message of Edna and her actions. Despite Chopin’s life being an influence on the novel, the time period she wrote it in had a greater impact on the novel.
The time period Kate Chopin grew up in was during a time when women had to be stay-at-home wives, which made her novel seem out of place. The novel did receive some praise for its “artistry and insight, [but] critics generally denounced Chopin for her failure to condemn Edna’s actions and for allowing Edna to make her final choice in life” (“The Awakening” 45). The Awakening takes place ahead of its actual time period, which was why critics were upset with Chopin for allowing Edna to choose her own destiny. The time period of the novel was the reason why it did not get its recognition until many years later. In the late 1800s, issues of women receiving equal rights as men were too new for the novel to have any impact when it was published (“The Awakening” 57). The women’s movement did not really start until after the novel was published, hence why it caused an uproar and was denied. Chopin decided to go beyond the time period and allow her female protagonist, Edna, to choose what she believes. Within the novel, Edna starts to have feelings towards another man named Robert, so “The sentiment which she entertained for Robert in no way resembled that which she felt for her husband, or had never felt, or expected to feel” (Chopin 62). Edna did not realize her own feelings toward Robert because at the time, women could not have feelings of their own. She never expected to feel something towards Robert, than what she should feel towards her husband. Women are suppose to be caring wives and mothers, but Edna was distant and detached from her husband and kids, which was “unacceptable in society where a woman's sole purpose was to serve their family” (Pearson and Rice). It was woman’s “job” to stay at home to serve the family, which Chopin disagreed on, so she had Edna become distant from her family. Because the novel was ahead of the time period, where women were able to choose how to live their own lives, it was considered unacceptable in society. Society back in the late 1800s, women did not have much rights on how they could live their own life, was similarly to Edna, but Chopin decided to have Edna take a different path in society and choose how she wants to live:
She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and they concerned no one but herself. Edna once told Madame Ratignolle that she would never sacrafice herself for hrt children, or for any. (Chopin 62)
For years Edna had been accustomed to having certain thoughts and emotions bottled up because she was not allowed to voice them, but she later figured out that they are her own thoughts and emotions and she can control them. Even though The Awakening was out of place when it was published, the actions of Edna inspired women to take control of their own lives and to have their own thoughts and emotions.
The Awakening provided insights of the thoughts and beliefs of author Kate Chopin. Even though the novel is not an autobiography, the character of Edna similarly relates to Chopin. Despite the work not receiving the credit it deserves at the time of it publication, it expounds the importance of women’s independence. The characters and messages of this novel influenced others and society many years later. By the early 1900s, Kate Chopin abandoned her writing as her health worsened (“The Awakening” 46). On August 22, 1904, Chopin died of a cerebral hemorrhage (“The Awakening” 46). Through her other written stories, she shared her beliefs for others to read.

Working Bibliography
“The Awakening.” Novels for Students, edited by Diane Telgen and Kevin Hile, vol. 3, Gale,1997, pp.45-66
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Bantam Books, 1992
Davis, Sara deSaussure. "Katherine Chopin." American Realists and Naturalists, edited by Donald Pizer and Earl N. Harbert, Gale, 1982. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 12. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=pl3059&v=2.1&id= GALE%7CH120 000919&it=r&asid=44430628e2c763f7d56827b09a4e157b.
“Kate Chopin.” American Literature. Web. 1 Feb. 2017
https://americanliterature.com/author/kate-chopin/bio-books-stories
Pearson, Lena, and Cathy Rice. The Author and Historical Context of The Awakening. 1 Feb. 2017. https://katechopinartistacceptance.wordpress.com/about/
Wyatt, Neal. “Biography of Kate Chopin.” Domestic Goddesses. 1995.
archive.vcs.edu/english/enguch/webtexts/hour/katebio.html