Feminism And Oppression In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

Kate Chopin provides a feminist perspective of patriarchal oppression in social roles assigned to Edna Pontellier in her text The Awakening. Chopin portrays the patriarchal oppression through the stream of consciousness of Edna. Since Edna was a woman she was enforced to her wife and mother duties by her husband. Her husband would become furious when she would not act like any other women, “Her absolute disregard for her duties as a wife angered him” (Chopin 62). She is expected to do her duties on a daily basis without any excuses. A man has no time to be doing the duties of a woman because their role in society is completely different to that of a woman in society. Men are too busy working to be worrying about what goes on at home. Feminism has changed throughout time, from

Mallard acts when finding out about the death of her husband. She confines herself in order to process what the death of her husband really meant, “When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her” (Chopin, 129). The death of her husband made her emotions feel different in a way she did not feel before. No woman should have to trapped inside of their own bodies and cannot act the way they want to without having to be judged. It was like a heavy weight was lifted from her, “Free! Body and soul free!” (Chopin, 130). She could not fully express her emotions because she did not want to reveal what she was thinking of in her head. The feeling of her self-assertion pleased her greatly and was not something she felt when her husband was alive. Her attitude also relates to Hall’s first key principle of feminist analysis essay because she realized that she was now free from the oppression she had felt. The feeling of freedom left her mesmerized and the death of her husband was the best thing that could have ever