Inequality In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

Throughout history, women have been restricted in their social right in silence under men’s shadow. However, as the movement for complete equality between women and men is brought up as a big issue, to have the same social quality without distinction of sex seems to have been achieved today. Furthermore, people, nowadays, know fairly well that such an inequality is not only unfair but also unjust. On the other hand, despite all the efforts that have been made to promote equality, the issue sometimes comes out as a serious problem and it is still undeniable that men are dominant in society. Therefore, it is not difficult to guess how restrained life women lived in the far past. Kate Chopin treats and shows the low social position problem of
The story mainly discusses the woman’s regained freedom but, at the end of the story, the woman’s death shows that it is premature to think that women can recover their autonomy. The story begins when Louise Mallard hears the news of her husband Brently’s death in a train wreck from Richards, her husband’s friend, and Josephine, her sister. Because Louise has heart disease, they tell the news with great care. Louise first feels a great loss and cries. Then she goes to her room alone. Gazing vacantly out the window, she comes to discover her new side of which she hasn’t even been aware. She realizes that she has won back her freedom which has been deprived by her husband. While she is picturing her coming free days with great pleasure, Josephine, her sister, keeps knocking at the door, being worried about Louise. Louise comes out of the room and Louise and Josephine come across Richards at the bottom of the stairs. Just at that moment, Brently, Louise’s husband, comes back surprisingly, and Louise dies. The doctor says that she has died of joy, but only readers know the truth; even if it is a period that women long and struggle for the day of free, so far, it is only a dream. In other words, as yet, they are living in an androcentric
Narrator refers to “—of joy that kills” in her death. Then, what leads her to death? Precisely speaking, what makes her death be joyful one? “a monstrous joy” in the text is the answer for the question. To think deeply, “a monstrous joy” can be interpreted as the author, kind of a founder of feminism literature, wants to cast a reflection of her expectation, which she has born secretly in mind, in Louise. Taking into consideration that the story is written even before female suffrage is guaranteed to woman, for an ordinary woman, who lives a serene passive life without any ambition, the unexpected loss of her husband must be something that is much bigger than just a trivial sense of loss when she first hears the news. But she shortly comes to know that she can manage to live happily without her husband, which means she has already experienced the pleasure of emancipation. Thus, now, she can’t go back to her life again. The author doesn’t let her pleasure exist only in her realm of the subconscious so Louise’s joy is expressed as an extreme reversal, which is death, of the story. Since her thirst for freedom has already reached its climax, her husband’s safe return naturally drives her to the exit which is death. Her fate is her choice, rather than giving up and, at the same time, preferable to accepting her coming miserable days. The author concludes the story by giving a sign “—of