For a long period of time, women have been repressed, viewed as the lesser sex and claimed as property of men. This made it harder for them to enjoy life and to discover their true selves. In both Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the path to self discovery can be difficult, but can lead to fulfilling endings. Both authors presented how two women from different backgrounds can experience the same struggles and harvest the same desires.
Self discovery brings about newfound freedoms in Chopin’s The Awakening, when Edna Pontellier moves into a “pigeon house” which provides both an escape and a source of independence from her restrictive life as a Victorian woman. The pigeon house “at once …show more content…
During Edna’s journey, she fraught with social challenges as she goes through a change in behavior and attitude in a male dominated society. Edna is in conflict with her husband's expectations of her roles as his wife, and as a mother. She struggles to liberate herself because of the environment, culture and social class she lives in. In the Victorian era, women were seen as property of their husbands and were there to take care of the kids and to provide sexual needs. Edna on the other hand, believes that she is “going to pull [herself] together for a while and think--try to determine what character of a woman [she is],”(Chopin 427). She embodies the social ideals for women of that era who dealt with the same obstacle. In the novel, she is presented as “individualistic--a maverick; she was passionate; she was courageous and intrepid--she was the definitive persona which thousands of women during the late nineteenth century exalted as a role model”(Buhle). The way she walks, talks, looks and her attitude “suggested the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone"(Chopin …show more content…
Because of the lack of fulfillment between Edna and her husband, she is led to the discovery of her new relationship with Robert LeBrun who is the cause of her personal, social and sexual awakening. Leonce, her husband, treats Edna as a possession, not as a wife or a lover. She always feels that “Her marriage to Leonce Pontellier was purely an accident,” (Chopin 111). Even though he does his duties as the man of the house, he still pays very little interest in her. The amount of time Enda spends with Robert doesn’t bother Leonce, which shows the lack of emotional connection they have. He was “like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse,"(Chopin 403). When Edna meets Robert she finally realizes “what she had been missing with Leonce. She longs for passionate love and affection that Leonce fails to give her,” (Khullar). The more time Robert and Edna spend together the more her views and personality start to change because he is the one “who awoke [her] last summer out of a life-long, stupid dream,” (Chopin
Self discovery brings about newfound freedoms in Chopin’s The Awakening, when Edna Pontellier moves into a “pigeon house” which provides both an escape and a source of independence from her restrictive life as a Victorian woman. The pigeon house “at once …show more content…
During Edna’s journey, she fraught with social challenges as she goes through a change in behavior and attitude in a male dominated society. Edna is in conflict with her husband's expectations of her roles as his wife, and as a mother. She struggles to liberate herself because of the environment, culture and social class she lives in. In the Victorian era, women were seen as property of their husbands and were there to take care of the kids and to provide sexual needs. Edna on the other hand, believes that she is “going to pull [herself] together for a while and think--try to determine what character of a woman [she is],”(Chopin 427). She embodies the social ideals for women of that era who dealt with the same obstacle. In the novel, she is presented as “individualistic--a maverick; she was passionate; she was courageous and intrepid--she was the definitive persona which thousands of women during the late nineteenth century exalted as a role model”(Buhle). The way she walks, talks, looks and her attitude “suggested the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone"(Chopin …show more content…
Because of the lack of fulfillment between Edna and her husband, she is led to the discovery of her new relationship with Robert LeBrun who is the cause of her personal, social and sexual awakening. Leonce, her husband, treats Edna as a possession, not as a wife or a lover. She always feels that “Her marriage to Leonce Pontellier was purely an accident,” (Chopin 111). Even though he does his duties as the man of the house, he still pays very little interest in her. The amount of time Enda spends with Robert doesn’t bother Leonce, which shows the lack of emotional connection they have. He was “like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse,"(Chopin 403). When Edna meets Robert she finally realizes “what she had been missing with Leonce. She longs for passionate love and affection that Leonce fails to give her,” (Khullar). The more time Robert and Edna spend together the more her views and personality start to change because he is the one “who awoke [her] last summer out of a life-long, stupid dream,” (Chopin