Similarities Between The Awakening And Ethan Frome

Ethan Frome and The Awakening Edna Pontellier, from Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and Ethan Frome, from Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, both wished to elevate from the societies they lived in and hated. They each come from separate backgrounds that are immensely different. Edna is from the high class, privileged Creole society. Ethan is a poor farmer from Massachusetts. To elevate from society and escape their emotional prisons, they try overcome obstacles such as outcast risk, societal responsibility, and guilt. Edna believes that she accidentally got married because she accepted the traditional path. She married Leonce due to the fact that he was financially sound and in love with her. After a summer in Grand Isles she starts to realize the fault in the marriage. Edna does not care for her children as the other Creole mothers do; she would not give herself and her sanity
Edna changed. She stopped receiving callers in Tuesdays, went and did what she wanted, and, later, removed herself from her family’s home and got her own place. “The pigeon-house pleased her. It at once assumed the intimate character of a home, while she herself invested it with a charm which it reflected like a warm glow. There was with her a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual. Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. She began to look with her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to “feed upon opinion” when her own soul had invited her.” None of this allowed her to be happy though. She felt as though she would let her kids down if she left with Robert. Her love could never be and the only way to escape this sadness and emptiness was to kill her