by Erin K. Wiedemer

Created on: February 11, 2008

Kate Chopin's The Awakening is a novel, which focuses upon the expectations and rules that were imposed upon women in the nineteenth century Creole society of New Orleans. Women were expected to marry, have children, and support their husbands. They were expected to conduct themselves in a well-bred fashion and manage the household in its entirety. In particular, The Awakening deals with a young, married woman named Edna Pontellier. In the beginning of the story, Edna is portrayed as an average woman of the period. She bore two children and undoubtedly supported her husband and his goals. She was a completely devoted wife and mother. She had married Leonce Pontellier, not because of love, but because he wooed her with much devotion and her family supported the match. Edna admitted, "Her marriage to Leonce Pontellier was purely an accident" and that, "no trace of passion or excessive and fictitious warmth colored her affection" (481).

Slowly however, Edna began to awaken from her social conformity. During her summer at Grand Isle, Edna was given the opportunity to behave as she wished. She ate dinner when she was hungry, she went swimming with whomever pleased her whenever she desired, and she went wherever she wanted at any time. She had conversations with people who interested her and she would speak her mind. Her new found freedom to be the woman she secretly was instead of the woman who pretended to be the perfect Creole housewife, awakened a new vitality in Edna. "A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,-the light which, showing the way, forbids it" (477). The light that was dawning within Edna was her individuality awakening from years of repression. It opened her eyes to the fact that the expectations and rules imposed upon women caused her to play a role that was not her own.

The light of her true self shone upon her life and Edna could clearly see the decision that lay before her. She had to choose between staying with Leonce while continuing to pretend to be the model Creole matriarch, or leading her own life as an individual in solitude and despair. Could she be happy in a life with Leonce after her awakening? Could she continue to blithely play a role in which she was uncomfortable? Nevertheless, with her eyes wide open, she suffered the bars that encaged her, and saw how trapped she was, and felt how desperate her situation was.

She stood apart from the other women at Grand Isle because of her dawning individuality. She differed wildly

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