The Awakening's Destroyed Potential

Throughout time women have expressed and demonstrated their need, and their right to be equal with men; to no longer be viewed as only someone who represents a specific and restrictive role, such as a mother or a wife, but to be understood as a person, someone with their own ideas and their own inhabitations. As a form of expression literature was used as an outlet for women. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening was a novel written to communicate, and perhaps to promote change, concerning women’s position and their confining role in society, yet with its beautiful prose put aside, the message that was actually expressed was quite negative.
Throughout the novel Edna Pontellier, the main character, is portrayed as a woman who is battling with herself to come to terms with her place in the grand scheme of things, yet there is a part of her that doesn’t wish to fit this mold. There is a part of her that wishes that she was more than just a wife, a mother, someone to keep the house in order...