Patriarchy In The Awakening

As a woman learning to be herself in a patriarchy and a culture in which she could not express herself “Edna looked straight before her...felt no interest...part and parcel of an alien world” (Chopin 60). Edna is separated from society, seeming to have given up on finding herself within a society that she is now opposed to. She has lost hope in society, feeling as if she was in another world that had become evil and against her. In The Awakening Kate Chopin develops a theme of how Edna is struggling to find s self identity, while stuck in a patriarchal society. Edna begins to learn about new aspects of herself and figure herself out. As Enda grows throughout the story, who she becomes more relevant. Slowly “Edna began to feel like one who awakens out of a dream, a delicate, grotesque impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul” (Chopin 36). Edna begins to realize who she really is and comes out of the cloudy atmosphere her mind has been clouded with. Edna realizes the platform of her life and she learns “the mythical triumph of self over a restrictive patriarchy” (Rames). Knowing that she cannot leave her

Edna was an individual, she strived by herself, which led to her being lost from finding who she truly was. As she grew, Edna became more self reliant and “even as a child she had lived her small life all within herself” (Chopin 18). Edna was shy as a child, she focused on herself, not others and supported herself alone. This leads to Edna being lost in who she is, all of her life she has had to focus on providing everything, so her true self is lost. Lost in who she is “Edna is led to despair by her assumption that she can attain no true attachment and retain her true identity” (Ryan). Edna is hopeless of finding her genuine identity. Throughout her childhood, Edna had many hardships which contributed to her lost