The Awakening Analysis and Aftermath

The Awakening by Kate Chopin follows Edna Pontellier in the mid/late 19th century. (I am assuming the novel takes place the between 1870 and 1890, because Edna's father was a general in the Civil War.) Edna, like many women in this era, is apathetic and uninterested in life--she is lonely and bored, and cannot seem to find happiness. She is comforted through her art, spending hours painting, only to hear her husband complain and worry that she will not complete her "household duties." As a married woman, her independence is extremely limited. (In the US in 1872, Illinois granted the freedom of occupational choice to both men and women. But when Myra Colby Bradwell, who studied as her husband’s law apprentice to pass the Illinois bar, tried to practice as a lawyer, the US supreme court ruled that the state doesn’t have to grant a law license to a married woman. Their ruling was in 1873.) Edna is pushed into the arms of another man, two actually, and realizing she cannot do anything she wants, she kills herself.

Fortunately, women have come very far in society, obtaining rights that were once just a fantasy, causing women to now have opportunities to succeed and do what they want with their lives. It all really started in Pennsylvania in 1718, where women wer able to own and manage property – if their husbands were incapacitated. Women kept gaining rights; New York, in 1771, was the first state to make it illegal for a husband to sell his wife's property; in 1839, in Mississippi, women could own property. The first women's rights convention was held in 1848. No other advancements were made, other than women's rights groups forming, until 1869, when Wyoming passed a women's suffrage law and allowed women to serve in juries in 1870.  By 1918, New York, South Dakota, Michigan, Oaklahoma, Nevada, Montana,  Alaska, Illinois, Arizona, Oregon, Kansas, California, Washington,  Idaho, Utah and Colorada have given women the right to vote. The ninteenth amendment was passed on August 26, 1920, granting women the right to vote, and it was only up from here. It was soon normal for women to work, because men were fighting wars. Women started going to college. More women than ever are completing their education and doing what they want.