The Awakening by Kate Chopin

It costs me almost one and a half weeks to finish reading it. Actually I’m wondering whether it is a “short story” or not. My teacher puts it into category of feminism and would like us to talk about it in the persperctive of women.

I don’t think it is feminist writing, for the problem faced by Mrs. Pontellier(The protagonist in The Awakening by Kate Chopin) is not the problem of women. Surely freeing women from the housework and the binding of the family can be called feminism. Unfortunately, I don’t think the story is about the “freedom of women”. I’d rather take it as the clashes between individuals and their marriages. The problems in marriage can’t be called as the problem of husband or wife. Both of them share their responsibilities if they marriage fails to last.

The question I’m wondering is whether a woman like Mrs. Pontellier should get into marriage or not. She is a woman with the heart for freedom. But the marriage itself means some responsibilities and to sacrifice part of your freedom. “You are no longer lonely”, in other words, mean that “You are no longer free as a single person”.

I guess out the outcome of Mrs. Pontellier before I reading the last chapter. As the surroundings are pressing her so hard, and she is no longer bind spiritually by her marriage and wants to enjoy her freedom. The only justified outcome is to free herself from all the responsibilities forever.

I sympathize her in the sense that the society at her time desires a women to be devoted to her family totally, I mean, physically and spiritually. What’s more, she chooses wrongly, since her husband and she are of different types. She can’t even talk the problems out as he can’t understand her at all.

However, she does go to extremes. I think her husband is not so bad after all as he’d like to leave her some space to solve her problem. If she takes her children as burdens, why does she get into marriage in the first place? If she were forced by her surroundings, I’d pity her. If she got into marriage to get rid of her loneliness, I’ll look down upon her. This is the point hard to judge, for I’m not Mrs. Pontellier, I’m just an outsider of the story.