Women and Work

Paper Summary:

Kate Chopin's controversial novella "The Awakening" pre-dated the feminist movement in America, but the rebelliousness of her protagonist presaged a revolution in women's roles in society that would arrive in the ensuing decades. This paper examines the changing situation of the American woman during the 1900s, from the socially conscripted mother and domestic servant to the empowered and economically viable female of the high capitalist era. Chopin's Edna Pontellier is shown to provide a blueprint for this iconoclastic new woman. Sociological and economic ideas of the day are conflated with Chopin's narrative to provide a multifaceted and historically-grounded analysis.

From the Paper:

"Although afforded a generous amount of comfort and leisure through her husband's economic success, Edna is nonetheless restricted to the domestic domain in her activities. Paradoxically, she is trapped in a situation wherein "the impedimenta of her female, wifely oppression are precisely the impedimenta of her upper-middle-class status." The divided realms that Leonce and Edna occupy throughout The Awakening epitomize the concept of "separate spheres" first acknowledged by French social critic Alexis de Tocqueville after his visit to America in the 1830s."

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