Rachel Clancy
3 January, 2017
Mrs. Schroder
6th Period
The Awakening
The Awakening by Kate Chopin highlights the values of the society through the alienation of Edna Pontellier due to her gender. Edna Pontellier is a 28 year old woman living in the 1800s who is married to Leonce Pontellier, a successful businessman. During this time, and especially in the Creole community that she lived in while staying at Grand Isle, women were not viewed as equals to men; they were meant to comply with the fact that they were property of their husbands. Throughout the novel, Edna quickly becomes more unsatisfied with her marriage and the life that she is living, therefore beginning her journey of becoming a more individualistic woman. Over the course of
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She does not watch after them or spend as much time with them as the other mothers do. It seems that she is often too concerned with herself, and she finds herself getting caught up in other tasks. She became to concerned with things such as painting, music, and Robert. This is something that was not considered a normality in a traditional Creole family, and she was often criticized for this by her husband, however that never changed the way she acted. I believe that the fact that Leonce criticized her parenting, though he doesn't do any more than her as a parent, shows that women were mostly never viewed as anything more than …show more content…
While there he expressed his worries of Edna and of her behavior. He informed the doctor of how their relationship was and some of the changes she has made. When Leonce finished, Dr. Mandelet raises some questions about her family history, and of the people she had been around. They together came to the conclusion that it was just a phase that she would eventually get over. As the reader, I believe that Leonce taking it as far as to go to a doctor because his wife was showing some independence in her life shows how uncommon it was in that