Edna's Awakening

2 Pages 616 Words

Edna’s Attempts for Happiness

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening deals with a young wife living in common days and times. Where every man works and provides for his family and the woman’s primary focus was the care of her children and other household duties that women were responsible for in those days. The main character of this novel, Edna Pontellier, struggles from day to day to try and establish herself as an individual in the midst of women following tradition and who were satisfied with being a mother and a wife. In every instance that Edna was awaken to what she thrived for out of life, her husband, her friends, or the society in which she dwelled tried to find a way to relinquish her dreams and bring Edna back down to the other common wives and mothers. Through all of the efforts made to keep Edna a commoner, it opened her eyes to what she was aspiring to become and how her children, husband, or friends would not prevent this from occurring.
Mrs. Pontellier’s husband, Mr. Leonce Pontellier, was the typical male image in those days. His thoughts were since he provided for the family, the least Edna could do was look after the children. One scenario in the novel when Mr. Pontellier believed his son had a fever, he literally puts Mrs. Pontellier in her place by stating his views the conventions of this time. “ If it was not a mother’s place to look after children, whose on earth was it?” (Chopin 9). Mr. Pontellier resembles John in the story “ A Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, in the sense that both did not want their wives to reach their true potential and to prevent this from occurring they used mind games to try and keep the wives below them. In both cases these acts were the most painful ones, but also pushed both wives into the direction of change and individuality amongst other common individuals.
The friends that Mrs. Pontellier associated with were not many, but closet one to her was a man ...