The Awakening By Kate Chopin: Literary Analysis

We learn about different cultures and time periods from the literature of those societies. This literature helps the reader dive into the conditions that exist in the world the story is occupying. As seen through “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe, and The Awakening by Kate Chopin, the Victorian period, in particularly in America, had very prominent themes. In this period as expressed through the literature of the time, the expectations of the status quo commanded women to seek out and submit to a man, and in doing so, they sacrificed their personal self for these men and their children. As seen in our first piece of literature, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, women were subjected to their husband’s opinions and inclinations, and if they provided any sort of opposition, they were made to feel that this was against the natural way of things. The narrator of the short story expresses these feelings when she states, “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus - but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about

She tries to break the mold that society has placed her in by refusing to conform to the will of men. She sees things as they are and tells the reader point blank as seen in, “They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals” (Chopin, 8). Edna is telling the reader in catering to the whims of their husbands and children that they are losing their identity as people. Edna is making a pointed critique that to be the type of woman that subjects herself to the state of affairs of the Victorian period is to be the type of woman who will not have an identity to return