Women In The Awakening
...portrayed in The Awakening. The goal of this paper is to compare and contrast the women in the book to the women during the turn of the nineteenth century and the society's reaction to the novel.. The novel shows the social constraints of women in the Victorian era. During this time, women were supposed to be docile, domestic creatures, whose main concerns in life were to be the raising of their children and submissiveness to their husbands.
The setting of The Awakening also contributes to the viewpoints as to how women were viewed at the time of the writing. The novel was published in 1899 and set in the Creole section of Louisiana. Although the feminist movement was starting to emerge in the other parts of America at this time, it was almost entirely absent in the conservative state of Louisiana. Under Louisiana law, a woman was still considered the property of her husband. "A Creole husband is never jealous' because the fidelity instilled in Creole women from birth ensures that a man's possession of his wife will never be challenged" (Creole). According to the Oxford Reference Online, a Creole is a "name applied to American- born descendants of the French and Spanish settlers of Latin America" (Hart). In the essay "The Southern Woman in Fiction" by Marie Fletcher, "
the Creole girl lives to become a Creole wife; she should marry once and once married, she should be a devoted and dutiful wife even though her husband and her life in general may prove anything but ideal" (Fletcher 195).
Adele Ratignolle epitomizes the ideal Creole woman. She is a devoted wife and mother who epitomizes womanly elegance and charm. Adele idolizes her children and worships her husband, centering her life around caring for them and performing her domestic duties. Even though Adele appears to be proper, she also portrays Creole mannerisms. Creole society imposes a strict code...
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