The Awakening Blog

Reading The Awakening again, after having read it in high school, was certainly a different experience. Since then I have read numerous other books that not only add to my current knowledge but also inform previous knowledge or books that I've read. Specifically, I find the circumstances, or perhaps the general dilemma, of Edna's life similar to that of April Wheeler in the book "Revolutionary Road". Both of these women struggle with the limitations and thus the consequences of domestic life and the standards established by the culture and society of each of their respective times. However, even though these women are separated by decades of history and change - the Victorian Era and the 1960's - they still struggle with these base issues of femininity, gender, gender roles, and numerous other issues tied to familial expectations... their personal plights however are merely viewed through different historical contexts. Still, despite the generations of thought and progress that span between them, they both meet an outcome that is self-inflicted and rather tragic. I find this to be incredibly intriguing, because it only emphasizes the fact that despite how much we as a culture or society may think we change or progress in terms of our ways of thinking, specifically with gender, the base issues and struggles are always there and always affect us. Granted, these stories are fictional... still they are born from a reaction to real life circumstances.

My question therefore is: What other connections between female characters through out literature can you think of that are similar or different to Edna's and April's? Do you think that the change of time and progress of culture and ways of thinking can ever alleviate these base issues that women like this face? Or are these struggles and plight's that women... and maybe even men... will continue to face regardless of how much we may come to understand about it?