Women Becoming a Self

For a long time, I have wanted to re-read Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. I remember first reading it in college in the seventies and being saddened that a woman so vital and talented could be so repressed by a society that deemed women to be property of their husbands.

The feminist in me cheered Edna on in her endeavors to be free and realize her self-worth and sexual liberation. Fifty years later, the woman in me is saddened that Edna could only find herself and her freedom through drowning.

Though dated, having been published in 1899, that story and the others in the collection about women becoming a Self, overcoming limitations and fears, resonates with me today. I can’t know what the toll was for Kate Chopin to create the scenario in The Awakening, but I am forever thankful that she did.