The Awakening: Gender Roles and Societal Limits Kate Chopin devoted herself and her writings to challenge the given female role in society during her time, to express a woman’s distinct identity apart from her husband, and to render a pure female experience. She once wrote, “The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.” The Awakening thoroughly described the liberation of the female protagonist and her gender role in society. The heroine of this novel
While Chopin utilizes several examples of symbolism throughout her novel, The Awakening, no symbol is as powerful as the various images of birds. These birds play a major role from the first sentence and throughout the novel in its entirety in an effort to reinforce the theme of the novel. Chopin explores how men, and even society as a whole, during the Victorian Era “caged” women to illustrate that women are not strictly limited to being simply mothers and wives. By symbolizing women as birds, Chopin
revolution. (Walder, p.257) Paradoxically, Edna’s awakening is cumulative and complex as she experiences a powerful, emotional and physical awakening and becomes enlightened to her inner-self. The omniscient narrator describes the process as “Mrs Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the world as a human being, and to recognise her relations as an individual to the world within and about her.” (Chopin, p.16) Peculiarly, Edna’s sexual awakening is comparable to animals in that her sexual
The Inevitable Outcome of Fighting Social Norms In both “The Awakening” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” the commonplace views of women are exceedingly unacceptable by today’s standards, yet they were deemed morally appropriate by the norms of society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The treatment and attitude of men towards women was based in a de facto “derogatory” manner. Because it was typically acceptable to treat women as inferior, and for men to impose their dominance upon