Womanhood In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

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The Awakening is probably the best-known novel by Kate Chopin. It addresses various issues such as the differences between Creole and American upper-class culture, the role of art, and prominently, the role of women. In pre-Civil War North America, among black antebellum slaves and white paid industrial slaves, women were limited to certain roles, rituals, and realms and could, therefore, be seen as a third kind of enslaved group by society. Women were seen as "angels of the household" and depended mostly on their husbands in financial matters and as heads of the family. The patriarchal order was predominant. In Kate Chopin's novel, the development of Edna Pontellier is used to depict the emancipation of women from an object, norms. In her essay "The Cult of True Womanhood," Welter contextualizes the concept of womanhood. The materialistic aims of working men often caused them to neglect religious values, which were "outsourced" to their wives. The True Woman was the religious head of the family and was not allowed to misbehave as men were. A prototypical True Woman was characterized by the four virtues of "piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity." The attributes of piety and purity enabled women to assume a superior moral position, granting them a claim to power that was only available to men in other areas. However, women did not possess any legal power. Welter describes the True Woman as an alternative Eve, sent by God to right what initially went wrong. A woman's duty was to shed harmony on those around her, and this task could be accomplished from her assigned sphere: the household. The closeness to God that was only displayed in women was one reason why the ideal woman was expected to be passionless (Welter). Another duty for women of that time was working in the domestic sphere, which included running the household, attending to guests, and, most importantly, being a good and caring mother. Women represented the family's status by displaying their manners and conforming to expected social norms.

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