Salem 1 Madeline Salem 12 APLC Ms. Smit 13/4 Analysis of Edna through a Feminist Lens ‘The year 1920 is an important date in history. This is the year that women suffrage finally happened. Women worked hard to get this right that they felt they deserved. Only men could vote up until this point and women felt they could display th political views by being included in voting. Although it took many years and hard struggles women fought and got their right. ‘Women want to have the same rights as men and a feminist would agree. Sociological-Feminists ‘would greatly be in favor of women working hard to achieve a right that would make them equal to men, Some people interoperate this wrong and feel that Feminists hate males but this is not true, Feminists don’t render hating males. Their views on certain things can be based off their four tenets, In the book The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Edna, a young twenty. ight year old, lives in the 1890s. In this time women were treated different than they are now. Edna exposes a need for freedom, Edna is argumentlly/a young lady who is independent. She enjoys doing what she wants and in her own time. This causes her to have a greater need for freedom. Her husband does not allow her to have this. There is an instance when this happens in the novel. Leonce, her husband, is trying to get Edna to come inside/ after he comes home and finds her outside, He tells her that it is more than folly for her to want to stay outside and that he permits her to stay out there all,Salem 2 night. She replies with "I mean to stay out here. I don’t wish to go in, and I don’t intend to. Don't speak to me like that again; | shall not answer you," (ChopinS3). She realizes that many times she has listened to her husband even when she didn’t want too. But this time she felt was somehow different from the other times because she stood up for herself. A feminist would condemn what Edna did, because she didn’t allow her husband to push her around; she stood up for herself, Edna almost breaks Lecone's dominance over her. Robert, a friend of Edna, takes Edna home before this scene happens. Edna sits down on a hammock that is outside and tells, Robert that she is going to wait for Lecone to arrive and that he can stay if he wishes. Robert leaves after a while, Edna still outside. When Lecone arrives home Edna's mind changes and she doesn’t want to come inside. By this point in the novel Edna has started to grow more fond of Robert and may have started to not feel her need for her husband. She doesn’t want him to hold her back from anything. This is why she stands up for herself when he wants her to come inside, Edna's husband holds her back from achieving freedom. This is revealed when she decides to go for a swim, Edna doesn’t know how to swim, but that evening when she goes out she finds that she can swim and goes out farther than she ever has. She then realizes the time she has lost by not trying to go out farther. She swims alone and feels that she can swim where no women has swam before. She gets this feeling of ambition even though she feels physically tired. But when she retums to shory realizes that her husband has been watching," You were not so very far, my dear; I was watching you" (Chopin 48). Metaphorically, when Edna is out swimming she realizes that she has this freedom but realizes this is unattainable when she returns to shore and realizes her husband has been watching. Feminist's could make an argument relating to the tenets. In one for the tenets, it makes that point that civilization is centered and»Salem 3 controlled by man in such a manner that women are subordinated, Edna tries to be free and go swimming but her husband thinks that she needs to be watched so she can't be left alone. Because Edna's husband is holding her back from freedom, it makes her mad. "... Taking off her ‘wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet. When she saw it lying there, she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it. But her small boot heel did not make an indenture" Edna had gotten so upset that her husband was holding her back that she wishes that she wasn’t married to him anymore. ‘Although she puts the ring back on, a feminist would argue that Edna realizes that she has a family that she needs to support and can't ruin it with a divorce) In Roberts absence Edna finds freedom unobtainable. After Robert tells Edna, the day of, he is leaving for Mexico, she is very upset. Edna doesn’t want Robert to go and finds it selfish that he would leave without reason and to not consider Edna in the making of his decision, Edna, some daysyis not happy and she doesn’t know why. "When it did not seem worthwhile to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead, when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation." (Chopin 97)/A feminist would argue that she has a des for Robert, which causes her to feel unhappy because of his absence, ist would Edna strives for freedom, but is held back by Robert and her husband. A femii argue that in the novel the men don’t respect Edna and treat her maturely. They also dominate over her. Robert leaves without telling her far enough in advance. Lecone thinks that Edna should do what he says. He also thinks that she should always be watched, even when she is out swimming.