A Doll's House Vs. The Awakening

Both A Doll House and The Awakening are centered around female protagonists in the late 1800s. These two women, Nora and Edna, differ greatly in d'minor but both end up self-empowered at the end of their written stories. One of the most notable difference between the two characters is their relationships with their children. While Nora embodies the ideal loving motherly figure, Edna represents women who were forced into the role of mother. Edna’s distant disposition towards her children allows her to seek her independence painlessly and indefinitely, while Nora’s deep devotion to her’s complicates and causes questioning over the seriousness of her maintaining her fully empowered state. Throughout the play Nora is a character for others. Most of her actions, in one way or another, are done to appease another character. These characters consist of even small undeveloped characters in the book like her children. The children in A Doll’s House are looked …show more content…
For the majority of The Awakening Edna makes damaging decisions that not only affect her husband’s reputation but also her children’s, without care for their futures. Edna’s children are also looked after by others, as was the expectation during this time period, but Edna is not an active member in their lives. Though she has tried to feel a motherly connection, Leonce and even Edna herself admits that she is not a good mother. Edna’s search for her identity amplifies how little affection she feels towards her children, “Their absence was a sort of relief, ... It seemed to free her of the responsibility which she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not fitted her” (Chopin 25). At the end of the novel, Edna is completely detached from everyone in her life, including her children, and is wholly her own. There is no question in the reader’s mind whether Edna will derail her course for independence for her children considering she was forced into the motherly