Feminism and Emotional Liberation in Kate Chopins The...

Feminism and Emotional Liberation in The Awakening In our time, the idea of feminism is often portrayed as a modern one, dating back no further than the famous bra-burnings of the 1960s. Perhaps this is due to some unconscious tendency to assume that ones own time is the most enlightened in history. But this tendency is unfortunate, because it does not allow readers to see the precursors of modern ideas in older works. A prime example of this is Kate Chopins novel The Awakening, which explores the marital infidelities of a woman stuck in a loveless marriage as she searches for her purpose in life. In it, we see how an institutionalized union such as marriage is, almost by necessity, dispassionate, while forbidden†¦show more content†¦However, there is room for improvement in this definition. It seems to imply that the two sexes must necessarily be linked. Especially problematic is the implication that marriage is a necessary social institution, which clearly goes against the most basic tenets of feminism as we know it. The aspect of feminism that seems the most relevant, and that is the most prominent in Chopins novel, is the aspect dealing with feminine liberation. The novel paints the picture of a woman struggling to escape from the bonds of a male-dominated, patriarchal society. It is the idea thus embodied that Chopin gives us - not only the belief in gender equality, as stated above, but also the option of members of both sexes to be independent. Even if women and men are supposedly equal, social stigmas against being single would prevent a wife from leaving her husband or a husband from leaving his wife. Yet, as Chopin illustrates, it is precisely outside of the bonds of marital life that one begins to find something resembling true love. It is this aspect of feminism - the belief that females are able to and allowed to be separate from males - that we will investigate in this paper, as it is clearly Chopins type of feminism. We can begin examining feminism in Chopins novel by investigating her views on marriage. In painting the picture of a woman who finds happiness outside of marriage, she implicitly condones divorce or maritalShow MoreRelatedLeo Haines. Professor Capozzi. Research Paper. April 29,1518 Words   |  7 PagesResearch Paper April 29, 2017 Kate Chopin Kate Chopin was a famous author of short stories and articles. Kate was born on February 8, 1850, in St. Louis Missouri, and she grew up speaking English and French. After her husband has passed in 1882, and that is when her writing career launched. In most of her novels and stories her characters are bilingual, also known as fluent in two languages. 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E motionally important can of course refer to anger as well as to love, or to that intense mixture of the two often found in women s relationships with women: one aspect of what I have come to call the double-life of women (see