The Awakening Quote Analysis

Living as a woman in a male dominated world is a burden for Edna in “The Awakening.” She is bound in the chains of society to serve as a housekeeper and wife. Despite the chains that bind her, Edna’s free spirit seeks equality. These chains placed around her serve as a primary focus for the novel; especially when she takes her own life in the process of freeing herself. Edna from “The Awakening” is a modern woman who seeks personal freedom which goes against the archaic time that she resides in where the role of a woman is to serve the men.
Equality is a dream that can never be achieved. In “The Awakening” though, it is Edna’s primary objective. She seeks to be treated as a person rather than a piece of property which her husband considers her to be. A quote from the novel which demonstrates Edna’s given …show more content…
During the novel, Edna considers herself to be more than what she is supposed to be in society. This inner force causes another antagonist to be unleashed in the form of her own self-image. This self-image antagonizes the society around her as it wails for release. The release in question is death. A major quote from the novel that highlights one’s inner self states, “But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!” The quote directly relates to Edna’s self as she feels that the outer world is vague, tangled and chaotic. This feeling then manifests into depression which then turns to death. This feeling improves the novel by contradicting the setting itself and allowing a look into the mental machinery of Edna. Overall, Edna’s inner self creates all of the external problems which make the novel