Womans Movement & the Awaking
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century there was a strong movement busting through the United States and Europe. This movement known as the Women's Movement was helping women everywhere to realize that they have potentials to be something on their own, and to choose on their own future not to have it chosen for them. Documents such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Declaration of Sentiments, and Mina Loy's Feminist Manifesto gave females a bold realization of how oppressed they had been. Also, during this time period, many notable women writers surfaced, one of the best being Kate Chopin. Kate Chopin's "The Awaking" is the epitome of realism when dealing with the oppression of women and the woman's movement. In "The Awakening" Edna is a woman bound by traditionalism and forced into a role of wife and mother. Edna is miserable even though she has, what appears to be a perfect loving husband she does not love him back. The main reason this marriage is an unsuccessful one is that Mr. Pontellier, Edna's husband, regards her as a possession; not as an individual. This belief is also oh so common, and or realistic of this time period. Women were to be thought of as possessions by men and their place was to be in
Edna, like other women of her time period real or fictional, realizes the boundaries of marriage, and makes many efforts to extend and break free of them. However at this time this idea was taboo, so Edna must rely on her feeling in her heart and visiting Robert who makes her feel free. Free to feel loved and to love which she has never really felt up to this point. However Edna is greatly upset when Robert moves to New York on business and turns to another man again for support who frees Edna in another way. This is one of the most realistic portrayals of a true woman stifled by the constraints of women during the Woman's Movement. There are still aspects of our society today that keep woman from their full potential. While Edna travels through her change Chopin reveals to her reader the injustices that society, at that time, put on women, and uses realism to express her ideas. The last draw for Edna was when Robert returned to the city. Even though she had been in an affair with another man she was still greatly in love with Robert and Him with her. Robert confesses he went away because he knew there was no hope for the two of them to be together because she was a married woman. Even though she was unhappy Edna had a slim chance of ever getting out of her marriage because
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Approximate Word count = 872
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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