Separate Spheres In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

Throughout the course of history, the rights of every individual male and female, has changed, but within the plot of, “The Awakening”, the story highlights women suffrage indirectly through the character development of Edna Pontellier. Tying the story plot of, “The Awakening”, into history, Kate Chopin uses the text as feminist literature to show the struggles of women who lived during the Victorian Period, in which they dealt with social norms, restricted rights, and strict expectations due to the creation of gender roles. During the Victorian Period, popular beliefs eventually lead to the creation of social norms, or as they were addressed at the time to be, “Separate Spheres”. Within these spheres women were assigned the role of an ideal …show more content…
Now with this knowledge in mind, Edna also tried to conform to these gender roles, to where as stated in the book on page 5, where when Mr. Pontellier returns home to check on his children, then concluding that one of them has fallen ill and required Edna to fix it. Then when she tries to explain that he is perfectly healthy Mr. Pontellier dismisses her, to where she retreats to the porch where she becomes extremely emotional. Referring back to the text, it shows that Edna is distressed about being able to properly take care of the family because it does not meet the expectations for Mr. Pontellier. Because of Edna’s character it is easy to conclude that Edna does not fit the role as a mother well, wanting to be an independent women, as her feelings are later explained in the text on page 14, where she thinks to herself that she does bode well in motherhood, to which are assessed by various characters who seem to agree with this