True Identity In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

Among the many emotions people feel in a lifetime, love proves itself to be the most complicated. For some, it is as straightforward as picking out an outfit, but for many, especially women of the 19th century, it remains a stale and blind relationship with which the only binding is a legal one - marriage. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, the protagonist Edna Pontellier is conflicted in her inability to escape conventionality for true independence because, in any instance, she still relies on a man to define her identity. She is either the possession of her husband or an accessory to her lover, showing how women of the 19th century did not have the power to self-actualize and embrace a true identity.
Throughout the novel, Edna’s objective is to detach herself from marriage and conventional manners. She realizes this when vacationing in Grand Isle and begins to disregard societal norms upon …show more content…
One such character is Robert Lebrun, the man Edna falls in love with. An affair was a taboo subject at the time, therefore, in Edna’s own eyes, her love for Robert was a revolt against such principles. While he uncovers what true love Edna is missing from her life, her independence is shattered when she jumps from being one man’s servant to another. Edna’s contradictory feelings are seen as easily transferable when, in the Robert’s absence, her identity and daily living remains dependent once more on another lover, Alcee Arobin. Even though their love is purely physical with no emotional intent, it robs Edna of her sole motive to maintain an independent identity, as her reliance on a man is a direct contradiction to feministic ideals. Edna’s incapacity to define her identity without dependency on a man reiterates the confinement of female integrity in the 19th