Mademoiselle Reisz In The Awakening

Don’t break the unspoken social law of conformity, ever, on penalty of social exile. In the 19th Century, to be a picturesque example of social position was the focus of every women. In Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening, Mademoiselle Reisz is truly unafraid to be herself; in both her society and that of the 19th Century, individualism in women was frowned upon, while certain talents were praised for being unique. All of the women in The Awakening fear breaking the unspoken social law of conformity except one: Mademoiselle Reisz. She is viewed as “a disagreeable little woman...who had quarreled with almost every one” (Chopin 43). Women were not supposed to express their opinion in an argumentative manner; argueing was exclusively associated with men. Her society expected that a Creole woman “receives with unaffected cordiality”

Women were supposed to be perfect wives. An ideal wife meant that she must be “useful and the ornamental…this is what we expect of the average American wife, merely as a matter of course” (Dix “The American Wife 129). Mademoiselle Reisz is not an exemplary wife, she has never even married. She has her own distinctive interpretation of useful and ornamental: useful to the cause of women seeking to be free of social constraints, and ornamenting her community as its peerless pianist. The concern at a breach of the idealized expectation of a housewife is expressed loud and clear by Mr. Pontellier while he admonishes Edna for ignoring their weekly routine: “people don’t do such things; we’ve got to observe les convenances if we ever expect to get on and keep up” (Chopin 74). Les convenances, fine points of social etiquette, are treated as uncompromising rules by society, yet as trifles by Mademoiselle Reisz and sometimes by Edna. The consequences of disregarding these rules of etiquette were, and still are,