Patriarchy In The Awakening

In ancient Indian cultures, women were expected to show respect for their husband by throwing themselves to their own death on their husband’s burning funeral pyre. In the more contemporary Victorian cultures, women were shamed for not spending visible and substantial lengths of time mourning their husband after he died. While acting as a superficially less extreme example, the Lady in Black of Chopin’s The Awakening who only appears briefly and has no lines also emphasizes the arbitrary social expectations put on women and the dire outcomes of systematic oppression. The Lady in Black does not have a proper name in the novel and she only appears wearing all black. The blandness of her character, as well as the stressed fact that she is a woman in her title, represents how patriarchy places unfair burdens on women that strip them of their individuality. The symbolic black she wears represents not just her husband’s death, but also the death of her identity. The foil mirrors emphasizes that Edna’s arbitrary social duties, such as addressing house callers and attending to the children, are burdens

The unromantic and pessimistic end to the novel acts to critique the quick-fix notion that advocates systematic oppression is easily solvable, and that women should simply deal with suffocating patriarchy. Edna’s loneliness and anger transcend Leonce and Dr. Mandelet’s initial understandings of her troubles, as they believe her rebellions will pass or that her actions are always in the context of other men. In actuality, even if patriarchy is invisible to most characters in the book, its dangerous nature (that makes Edna deem death as more preferable) stems from the fact it is widely ignored or regarded as natural and