Life Of Mrs Edna Pontellier example essay topic

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, shows how women were repressed and had to fight to gain all the freedoms we have today. It shows this through the life of Mrs. Edna Pontellier. At the beginning of the story, Edna is spending time at a summer house with her husband and children. She seems very unattached to her children at this point. Everything she does in the beginning is based on what Mr. Pontellier would like for her to do, and what he would approve of.

When Edna meets and begins to spend time with Robert Lebrun she finally begins to realize that she is not treated as her husband's wife, but almost as his servant. He believed her role was only to take care of the house, watch after the children, and receive the family's guest. He was strongly against her going out of the house, especially if it broke any part of her regular schedule. It seems very odd that anytime she talks about being married she always refers to herself as "Leone Pontellier's wife".

She does not refer to him as her husband or that they are married as if they are equal, but always her as his wife as if she is below him. This is all appalling to me. I cannot imagine being told I could not go out for a walk if I wanted to, or knowing that my husband did not really love me but only kept me as a prize to show off to others. Mrs. Pontellier is an incredibly strong woman, being able to fight against her husband's will and become her own person after being under his will for so long.

The actions she takes and way she thinks actually make a lot of sense to me. I can understand why she was unhappy with the way she was given very few freedoms, but who would not be upset by that? I think she did not feel as close to her children as most parents do because she had no choice but to be with them. After a while most anything will begin to get on your nerves, and therefore you tend to not care as much as maybe you should about it. Also, with Robert and A robin, I think she only thought she loved them because it was obvious that she could not have either of them. That whole thing was just another one of her rebellions.

Of course this novel got negative publicity in the 1890's. It showed a woman raising up against her husband and succeeded. The talk of divorce in the story was probably another big issue in those days. I do not think many couples got divorced back then. This was also a time in which the women were beginning a revolution against the repression, and this novel only admitted that there were problems of that sort in our country. The conflicts raised in this novel made people come to terms with the problems in society..