The Awakening

Edna Pontellier 's Suicide : Freedom or Failure

While in an age that was unhurriedly awakening to the unrestricted needs of women (i .e . the need for better education , the freedom to vote rights to her own property and her own children , Chopin dared to write of concealed needs that that era irreverently tried to deny to be of existence . As perceived in Chopin 's world , matrimony was the definitive goal of every woman 's life , service to her husband and her children her prime responsibilities , subservience her tacit virtue , self-sacrifice her daily

practice and her pleasure . Women who value and accept that world appear in Chopin 's The Awakening , as well as women who only partly confront the seemingly insignificance of women in that they would never ask for more freedom than what they could benefit from being under their husbands ' shelter . Yet what interest Chopin most is the woman who demands her own direction and chooses her own freedom as have been depicted in the struggles of Edna Pontellier , the protagonist in the story . The Awakening depicts Edna as a captive in her society-- a female , has children , and is a wife in a society that commands behavioral customs based on those circumstances . Throughout the story she is depicted as overwhelmed by these roles . Her struggles brought her to a rather tragic affirmation of her circumstances . Although it may seen that she had experienced a real awakening , the option she took to overcome what has been perceived as life...