Misogynistic Social Conventions In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

Jordan T. Carter is famously quoted as having said “I love women to death” in his interview with Complex. At the time of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, staged in nineteenth-century New Orleans, such a statement would have been obscene, indicative of a general shift in sentiment towards women and their role in American society today. Edna Pontellier’s sorrow is exacerbated by misogynistic social conventions that hinder her ability to relish life as she pleases. Edna is instead relegated to the duties of a traditional housewife bound in a fruitless marriage. The genetic structure behind Edna’s endless peril and struggle for self-autonomy is revealed in chapter 4 of the novella, when author Kate Chopin promulgated that the average women of Edna’s

Chopin portrays the oppression of women by illustrating Edna as having lamented over her marriage with Leonce, with Edna going as far as to say that "But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such a beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!" (Chopin VI) In this extract, Edna’s loathing of the expectations she is expected to fulfill is expressed in full force, with Edna disapproving of the fact that many women are expected to give up their own desires in order to maintain order and to take care of their familial duties. Edna’s awakening to her inner desires disillusions herself and her relationship with her husband. Edna seems to have finally broken the shackles placed upon her and expresses her love and desire for Robert, even going as far as to say that "There was no one thing in the world that she desired. There was no human being whom she wanted near her except Robert; and she even realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existence, leaving her alone" (Chopin

Through this passage, Chopin is using Edna as a way to reject the traditional expectations placed upon women to be subordinate to men and their desires while ignoring their own. However, Edna’s journey to break out of her cocoon culminated in the penultimate sign of futility, when “she stopped, and took off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet. When she saw it lying there, she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it. But the small boot heel did not make an indenture, not a mark upon the little glittering circlet” (Chopin XVII). Despite Edna’s best efforts, her attempt to break through the metaphorical fabric of the patriarchy proved to be in vain. Edna’s failure to fully defy social norms would result in her tragic death, when she chooses to drown herself to death rather than yield to social principles. This is illustrated in the text when "She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore