Guilt In The Awakening

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Guilty Conscience Fashion designer Coco Chanel once said, "Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death." These days, people are manipulated by guilt and allow it to control their lives. Guilt begins to control every action they do, the things they say, or the choices they make. It drives them to lose their true identity and sense of self. It consumes a person, making them think that they’re doing everything wrong. For mothers, it makes them feel like they aren’t adequately raising their children; however, this guilt isn’t self-inflicted, but rather, installed through pressure due to societal expectations. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontillier begins to lose herself as she begins to live a life based on societal expectations. These expectations guilt …show more content…
Just like Edna, it made her stick to those types of tasks instead of doing the ones she loves. Sometimes, I remember her doing dishes at two in the morning, so she could still finish her work projects, just to escape the guilt. Ultimately, she started filling her days doing other people's tasks, thus losing herself. Towards the end of the novella, Edna starts to realize how much she’s let guilt control her life. She confesses, “The children appeared before her like antagonists who had overcome her; who had overpowered and sought to drag her into the soul’s slavery for the rest of her days” (98). She finally realized that she was living her life for her children—not willingly—but because of guilt. Society made her believe that she would be living her best life by being a mother, but if she didn’t abide by these expectations, she would be mentally ill and an inadequate mother. She felt guilty because she believed that she was doing her children a disservice, so she began to do things for them instead of herself. She felt freer and happier once she changed her behavior after realizing that she hadn’t been living for
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