Gender Issues In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

The Awakening by Kate Chopin showcases the metaphorical awakening of a married woman named Edna. Throughout the novel, Edna deals with the temptation of her raging hormones and desires for other men. Edna also seeks to separate herself from the idea of a typical mother-woman and identify as equal to man. While I am all for the empowerment of women and equal rights, I feel that Enda fails to properly address pressing issues within herself. This leads to Chopin’s book leaving readers to shake their heads in disbelief at some of Edna’s actions. As a reader in the twenty-first century, The Awakening is an interesting, but unsurprising series of frustrating events. The entire novel is not filled with disappointments though, as it firmly stands in the face of a society that, at the time, refused to properly respect women. For readers in 1899, the novel could be considered the Eighth Wonder of the World. The Awakening conveys a controversial, provocative message that both fails miserably and succeeds perfectly in its …show more content…
The woman who lived an individual life to seek betterment for herself was not yet common. A woman’s role was to be a wife, who existed solely to serve her husband and children while living in the house. The Awakening was published before an overwhelming population of women truly began seeing themselves as individuals who were as equally deserving of happiness. Not until Chopin was likely close to finishing her novel did most women truly begin to awaken similarly to how Edna does. In the face of such a controversy, The Awakening truly was a work of brilliant art. However, a reader in the twenty-first century is aware of what women have persevered through to earn the same rights that a man has. Divorce has become prevalent in today’s society. Nothing spoken about in Chopin’s novel comes as a surprise, until the modern reader discovers its publishing