Women's Roles in Four Short Stories

Paper Summary:

This paper offers brief summaries of these stories and discusses how the roles of women are both subservient and equal to men in each. Each woman in these stories faces life her own way, and deals with the subservience that was so prevalent in her own way. The paper shows how these four stories aptly illustrate the intricate relationships between men and women at the turn of the century and how much women have grown since then.

From the Paper:

"Edna, the heroine of "The Awakening" is married to Leonce, and has two sons. Readers today see Edna as a woman struggling to find her own identity in a world defined by men. She becomes a "self-actualized" woman before it was fashionable, and it is too much to bear in Victorian society. As Edna begins on her journey of awakening, she begins to look inside herself, and discovers outwardly she seems content, but inwardly, she is far from happy. Some days she "was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight. . . ." On such days, Edna "found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested" (Chopin 58). Yet on other days, she is so despondent life "did not seem worthwhile . . . to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling toward inevitable annihilation" (Chopin 58)."

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