Comparing Women In The Awakening And The Yellow Wallpaper

The general portrayal of women in "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin and "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gillman is actually based on their period social class and the way the men in their lives treated them and the way men in general felt about women's lives. Edna, the main character, in "The Awakening," did more than our narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper." As we read "The Awakening," we find Edna as a wife and a mother who did believe, rather than actually being so. She was, for all purposes, from such a social class that her family went on beach vacations in Grand Isle when her husband could still go home to work. She spends time taking care of her children, even though she is not considered a mother-woman, and with other women whose husbands are …show more content…
Throughout the novel, the narrator assumes the social position that Edna Pontellier could very well be occupying one of the several socially accepted roles. Edna's "awakening," however, led her to all of these and search out her own identity. For sure, the men in the novel also actually play a significant role in shaping Edna's choices. Certainly, Leonce, her husband, and the children at the time led a life for Edna to be like Madame Ratignolle. Reisz represents a way for her to feel freedom and independence outside what she thought was socially acceptable for women at that time. In her writing of "The Yellow Wallpaper," the author reflects upon how her life was locked up physically as well as emotionally. We might say our narrator and Edna really are both physically and emotionally confined, but Edna does separate herself physically, which is fairly important, one might say. Her husband, without any doubt, had restricted his wife physically by making her stay mostly in her bedroom, and emotionally by staying isolated from her own child or from doing any kind of work provoking thinking. That shows he has led everybody to believe our narrator is not

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Comparing Women In The Awakening And The Yellow Wallpaper

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