The Role Of Tone In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

In earlier times, American literature barely depicted the true feelings of an oppressed woman. The implication of woman in the 1800s was a wife cleaning the house, taking care of the children, and satisfying her husband’s needs. In The Awakening, Kate Chopin wrote about the life of a grown woman, Edna Pontellier, who slowly discovered herself and independence. She used aspects of her personal life to portray Edna Montpellier's thoughts and feelings, in great detail, to express the personality of an independent woman. As a result of Chopin's descriptive imagery and diction in The Awakening, she was denounced by religious groups, critics, and society. The judgmental tone Chopin used towards society's rules on how women should behave, emphasized
She did not have the maternal instinct that other mothers had nor the love and admiration women often felt for men like her husband (Smith np). Subconsciously, she had always known there was more to life than husbands and children, but did not awaken until she met Robert Lebrun. The summer she met Robert was the beginning of her independence. Throughout The Awakening, Chopin focused on the theme of independence by writing about Edna’s progression in liberation, confidence, and self-reliance. One of her first bold acts of independence was when she refused to go inside when her husband demanded it from her. During the argument, Edna thought, “She could not at the moment have done other than denied and resisted. She wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that before and if she had submitted to his command… But she could not realize why or how she should yielded, feeling as she then did” (Chopin 42). As she refused to do as her husband ordered, she empowered herself and began her journey to independence. For the first time, she challenged what her husband had demanded of her and did not understand why she had not done this before. Edna was beginning to fall in love with Robert and uncovering her ignorance towards her own needs and desires. Edna’s newly discovered romance was where it became clear that she was undergoing independence. By admitting her feelings for Robert, she was claiming her prerogative of a love she had never for her husband (Smith np). Their affair was intimate in the emotional sense, but Robert left before the relation escalated into anything physical. Upon his return, Edna revealed to Robert her increase in confidence by kissing him first. For a woman to be bold enough to initiate the first kiss was very uncommon. Thus, she was had completely disregarded the precedents society had created and had displayed her new found confidence. After gaining