Edna's Awekening

Alfred Roberts
Eng. 102-H
Dr. Daniels
4/17/00

Edna’s Attempts for Happiness

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening deals with a young wife living in common days and times. Where every man works and provides for his family and the woman’s primary focus was the care of her children and other household duties that women were responsible for in those days. The main character of this novel, Edna Pontellier, struggles from day to day to try and establish herself as an individual in the midst of women following tradition and who were satisfied with being a mother and a wife. In every instance that Edna was awaken to what she thrived for out of life, her husband, her friends, or the society in which she dwelled tried to find a way to relinquish her dreams and bring Edna back down to the other common wives and mothers. Through all of the efforts made to keep Edna a commoner, it opened her eyes to what she was aspiring to become and how her children, husband, or friends would not prevent thi...