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Olyvia Symon
Ms. Renner
APE Lit
22 October 2015
Womens Rights in The Awakening
Women have always had unequal rights among most societies ever since the dawn of
time, and most women have learned to accept and even to conform to that belief, however wrong
or right that belief may be. Women were usually regarded as unequal to men and sometimes even
as property of their husbands. In the novel The Awakening, Kate Chopin discusses the role of
women in society and how protagonist Edna Pontellier does not conform to that role.
During the late 1800s, when this book was set, it was quite a difficult time for women.
Chopin explains the role of women in society and how they were expected to live back then. For
one, women were expected to be both wives and mothers. Edna Pontellier's character foil, Adele
Ratignolle, was the perfect example of a caring mother figure and a perfect wife. In fact, she
enjoyed this role (Kaplon). However, Edna was the complete opposite. Although early on in the
book, she may have enjoyed their presence, in the end, she actually resents them and does not
love them (Toth 4).
Another expected role of women during this time was that of a perfect housewife. She
was expected to tend to the needs of the house and to be perfectly submissive to her husband.
Chopin tells of how Mr. Pontellier is quite dissatisfied in his wifes behavior and how she has
completely angered him because she has not conformed to her expected role of a perfect
housewife (57). Mr. Pontellier also describes how bewildered and perplexed he is with Edna and

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her recent affairs which stray far from the normal actions of a good housewife. He even goes
so far as to say she is acting peculiar (Chopin 66).
Edna Pontellier does not seem to mind what people think of her. She does not conform
with the role of a typical woman and tries to find her own way of living. Edna realizes that she
cannot express her true self so she tries to voice her concerns by means of not conforming. She
does not want to have to force herself to meet expectations that she does not desire. Because of
this strong inner passion to find her true self, she is not afraid to find her true self, even if that
means acting differently on the outside. Edna fully embraces her new path to find herself (Cutter
201). Mrs. Pontellier, realizing that her current life is not making her happy, decides to cut out
some of the things that she considers useless or unappealing to her. She even goes so far as to not
accept her Tuesday visitors, as a normal wife should, and to simply do what she pleases and to do
what makes her happy (Chopin 56-57).
Since Edna has decided to become her own person instead of a normal woman, she in
turn does things that a normal woman would not do. For one, since she is dissatisfied with her
husband because she does not love him and he considers her his property, she kisses the town
player, Alcee Arobin, and has an affair with him (Chopin 83).In addition to not being a faithful
and normal wife, she also decides to not be a loving mother. She never found herself to be a
"motherly" type of person, and since motherly women were the norm back then, she again did
not conform. Edna completely disregards her role as a mother and does not tend to her children
at all (Kaplon).
Edna Pontellier was the symbol of women who wanted to be free. Women were very
pressured to behave a certain way, and Edna is just the voice inside many women who wanted
desperately to find freedom from that lifestyle. In the book The Awakening, author Kate Chopin

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discusses the role of women in everyday society and how Edna Pontellier does not conform that
role and instead tries to find a new life for herself.

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Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: Dover, 1993. Print.
Cutter, Martha J. "The Search for a Feminine Voice in the Works of Kate Chopin." Unruly
Tongue: Identity and Voice in American Women's Writing, 1850-1930. N.p.: . Mississippi:
UP of Mississippi, 1999. 87-109. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet
Witalec. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, 2002. 20th Century Literature Criticism Online. Web. 6
Oct. 2015.
Kaplon, Megan P. "Kate Chopin's The Awakening: Struggle Against Society and Nature."Student
Pulse 4.07 (2012). <http://www.studentpulse.com/a?id=657>
Toth, Emily. "Kate Chopin's the Awakening As Feminist Criticism." Southern Studies FallWinter 1991: 231-41. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol.
127. Detroit: Gale, 2002.20th Century Literature Criticism Online. Web. 6 Oct. 2015.