Friday, March 6, 2015
Edna's Awakening
I found Edna's suicide as a beautiful escape from a reality in which she never felt accepted. It seemed as if during the time she was alive she was expected to be a wife and mother. The two things which she felt trapped her especially when she said, "Despondency had come upon her there in the wakeful night, and had never lifted. There was no one thing in the world that she desired" (115). She had no desire in life because she felt the pressure of society. So my question is if she had lived in today's society with much less pressure on women to be married and have children, would Chopin still have created the same ending for Edna? Would anything have made Edna happy?
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I agree with you. Society puts so much pressure on women, and expects them to be a perfect, cookie-cutter mold of a mother and a wife that it caused her to take her own life. I believe society still puts pressure on mothers today, so I cannot necessarily say if I think the ending would have differed.
ReplyDeleteIf Edna were a woman in today's society I think she would have thrived much better in her quest for independence than she did in the story. I think it was the societal constraints that made Edna feel as if she HAD to get married and have babies in order to be seen as normal. Today it is completely acceptable for women to choose not to get married or have babies. I think she would have led a much more fulfilling life in our society and I feel as if Chopin was trying to enhance the idea that Edna's ideas were ahead of her time, but necessary for women to feel equal.
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