Evaluation of Kathleen Streater

Scholarly Evaluation Essay Kathleen M. Streater is author of the article “Adele Ratignolle: Kate Chopin’s Feminist at Home in The Awakening” which was published in the peer reviewed journal, The Midwest Quarterly. After doing an extensive search of Streater’s background, it does not appear she has written any other articles. Although not an expert on the subject of Chopin, Streater makes a unique and convincing argument in her article. She uses expert quotes to bolster her position that “to focus solely on Edna’s radical feminism is to limit Chopin’s exploration of feminism itself” (409). This argument is unique, as the author describes, because many critics dismiss Adele all together as a feminist. Chopin’s depiction of Adele as a “mother-woman” muddies the water because to “become a wife and mother is, on some level, to capitulate one’s self to patriarchal systems” (406).
Streater makes her purpose clear, in that she seeks to persuade academia to take a critical look at Adele Ratignolle’s “quiet revolution” against the patriarchal constructs of the day (409). Streater strives to show that Chopin contrasts Edna’s radical feminism with a more livable form in Adele. Streater admits that Adele’s feminism is easily overlooked. However, the author asserts that because Adele “lives to tell the tale,” Chopin “offers an affirmation of feminist possibilities” through her (406).
Streater begins to build her case for Adele as a feminist by showing that the over the top description of Adele as “mother-woman” should be viewed with skepticism. She notes that Ruth Sullivan and Stewart Smith see the narrator’s break in “grand assertions” about Adele as untrustworthy which therefore “suggests an ironic stance exists behind the narrator’s admiration” (407). She continues by stating that “This exaggerated description at once captures, and mocks, the idealized patriarchal role of mother-as-saint” (407). Streater attempts to show the reader that even though Adele is the