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Gender Roles In Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening'

790 Words4 Pages

Joshua Tungol
Mr. Mennenoh
English III Honors
10 February 2022
Title
Mothers play an integral role in the development and cultivation of their children. However, not everyone is ready to take on such a demanding yet crucial responsibility. Throughout the 1800s, a mother-woman was assumed to follow the general expectation of idolizing their children and worshiping their husbands. In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Edna Pontellier, the mother of two boys, is constrained by the roles of society placed upon her and longs to live a life of self-control and independence. Subsequently, she attempts to leave her husband, Léonce, and finds herself involved in sexually romantic relationships with multiple men. When taking this into account, Edna’s lack …show more content…

As Edna attempts to escape from Léonce’s possessive hold on her, she eventually moves into a pigeon home and sets focus on her career as an aspiring painter. After several days Edna realizes “the pigeon home pleased her… Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual” (Chopin 127). Although at first saddened after leaving her children, she comes to appreciate the simplicity of her new, developing life. The lifestyle she is in pursuit of does not allow her the time to be managing and raising young adolescents. Soon after, Edna cheats with Alcee and makes her final decision to live out the rest of her time with Robert. She does not take her children into any sort of consideration and seemingly places Robert over them, wishing to care for them no longer. In committing adultery, she essentially betrays her children and abandons her responsibilities as a mother. With the combination of Robert leaving and the inability to escape the societal restrictions placed upon her, Edna decides to drown herself. Right before her passing, Edna hallucinates and sees “her children [appear] before her like antagonists who had overcome her; who had sought to drag her into the soul’s slavery for the rest of her days” (Chopin 155). Edna’s illusions imply that she saw her children and her obligation to raise them as a burden. She believes they are in opposition to her true freedom and sees death as her only viable escape from them. Edna’s unwillingness to sacrifice her personal happiness exhibits her inability to nurture and provide for children of her

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Edna fully understands that society would brand her as a terrible woman, but she does not view herself as a bad person. There is an external and internal difference that Edna hopes to one day reconcile. Chopin, instead of creating tension within Edna, created tension within the society and Edna with her newfound independence does not mind how society classifies her. Decisively, it can be concluded that the tension between outward conformity and inward questioning builds the meaning of the novel by examining Edna’s role as a wife, mother, and as nontraditional woman in the traditional Victorian period.

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Edna tries to satisfy this desire by taking part in an adulterous affair with Alcee Arobin, a known playboy. However, this relationship doesn’t satisfy Edna’s wish for companionship as she uses Alcee only to satisfy her sexual desires. This all changes once Edna meets Robert Lebrun, who invokes a sense of excitement and love in Edna. Edna sees her relationship with Robert as her only chance to gain freedom from the confines of society; additionally Robert gives Edna the chance to have a fulfilling relationship as opposed to her loveless one with Leonce. Although the two are deeply in love with one another, Robert is unable to reciprocate Edna’s desires to be together.

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Her frequent vacations to the island, like her frequent dips into the ocean, begin to spark a personal change within the woman. A Creole man, Robert, shows Edna a new dimension of feelings she never knew she lived without, and she begins to look through life through a new lens. Having been awakened for the first time, she sees injustice and mistreatment where she saw none before. Chopin uses Edna’s new observations and reactions to the culture around her to illustrate the myriad ways women were marginalized. In an ironic twist, the white woman from Kentucky proves to be more liberated than her more traditional husband, who grew up

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When a woman becomes a mother she is obligated to convey her definite love and support towards her children. In Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening, Edna Pontellier, a wife and mother of two, lives in New Orleans during the late 1800s. Edna is very different compared to the other married mothers in New Orleans due to her inability to satisfy society's standards of motherhood. Edna commits a disloyal act of performing adultery against her husband which goes against all of the traditional societal moralities. Edna strongly believes in freedom and affection, regardless, Edna’s mothering style is bad due to how she views her children negatively and her inability to prioritize her children’s needs by neglect and abandonment.

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Before the idea of suicide entered Edna’s mind, Edna states she “would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself” (p. 49). Early on in the novel, Chopin highlighted that Edna’s stance on her family and children conflicted with the ideology of Creole culture. Chopin utilizes Edna’s early decision that she would give her life, but not herself, to express that Edna values her autonomy more than she does her children. By making this choice, Chopin is reflecting that Edna cherishes her own personal awakenings more than she does the social expectations that your children and husband come first. Later on in Edna's final moments, she notices that “the touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.

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Edna recognizes that her children live a sheltered life and occasionally need new experiences which is why she sends them off with their grandmother. She truly wants to see her kids happy and does everything in her power to make sure they have the best experiences possible. Edna finds herself wholly alone after Léonce leaves for work and “Old Madame Pontellier had come herself and carried them off to Iberville … She wished them to taste something of the life their father had lived and known and loved when he, too, was a little child”(Chopin 125). Edna slowly pulls away from the confines of her her life, more specifically her marriage, leaving her kids out of the awkward tension that is an unhappy marriage.

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At the beginning of the novel, Edna had appeared to be recognizing the fact that her life revolves around her husband and her children, and that it is her main duty to care for them. It is mainly Mr. Pontellier, her husband, who tries to establish an image of her being a both a perfect partner and wife. He views her as an object that must be suitable for the eyes of society. According to him, his wife is a “valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage” (Chopin 2). He is controlling over her appearance and actions.

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And with Leonce and the children’s absence, Edna branches off even further buying her own house and sustaining herself with a small income from her paintings. This allows Edna to gain even more independence from her household, children, and spouse, to the point that she has gone against the female submission rule in societies conventions. On the other hand, Adele is obedient and submissive to her household, husband, and children, rarely leaving the premise of her house. Because of Adele being the “mother-woman”(p.8) and following societies conventions, she is granted very little freedom as she can’t leave her house because of the duties she is expected to complete on a day to day basis. Adele’s obedience and Edna’s defiance contraste each other, effectively highlighting the themes of female submission and female freedom within the

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