Women In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

"The Awakening" by Kate Chopin is a novel that successfully portrays the life of women in the late eighteen hundreds. Women at that time had very particular rules of etiquette they were forced to follow. In "The Awakening" the main character, Edna Pontellier, believed that she should have free will to do what she wants, and not have to follow the proper etiquette that all women follow. Most of the females in the novel, like Adele Ratignolle, took pride in being women and followed the roles that the men in their society had made for them. Chopin effectively created two characters, Edna Pontellier and Adele Ratignolle, to illustrate the "rebellious" and "conforming" women of the late eighteenth hundreds. The motherly Adele Ratignolle