Kate Chopin and Feminism

The name Kate Chopin is synonymous with feminism. For genearned run avera circumventions she has caused wo workforce to around their situations in life history and caused workforce to fear her because she made women analyze. She started writing after she was widowed and left with a plantation and children to rear while living in a manful clubhouse. Instead of re attaching just to save the plantation, she chose to stay single and move from atomic number 57 with her children to her hometown in Missouri. Her physician advised her to write to overcome her depression.Little did anyone know that this advice would sensation to the writing career of one of the foremost American female writers. From the beginning, men saw her stories and novels as threatening. It wasnt until after her death that she was recognized for the smart writer that she really was. The reason the men of her generation was her feminist themes. two examples w here(predicate) this strong theme is evident are The S torm and The Awakening.Chopins storey The Storm is, as the title suggest, about sexual tensions of a repressing waera. It was considered scandalous for a female from the privileged class to even arrest the thought of sexual tension during the Victorian Era, and especially to write about it. The storm deals with two people, Alcee and Calixta, who were in love during their youth. They go on to marry another(prenominal)s that society says are right for them.They feel trapped by the rules of society and still desire each other. The reader is introduced to Calixta at their home, sewing and doing other household chores, unaware that the storm is coming. This suggests to Wilson that her sexuality is repressed by the constraints of her pairing and societys view of women, represented in this run outage by the housework. Airing out on the porch are her husbands sunshine clothes, which Wilson says allude to society in the form of the church. The story continues with other illustrations use the storm until, finally, after Alcee and Calixtas sexual encounter, the storm finally begins to pass and everything in the world seems renewed and fresh. (Wilson 2)In The Awakening the protagonist, Edna Pontellier, is a young charr married to a businessman, but she is dissatisfied with her marriage. In her society this intellection was considered unthinkable. She wants to wants to retain her individuality, her artistry, and to be sexually fulfilled. In her novel, she seeks an identity for women that is neither wife nor mother. To achieve this end, she incorporates progressive ideas of androgyny and female-female intimacy into her writing yet eventually the text, through characters who cannot escape essentialist and sentimental ideologies, demonstrates the failure of her attempt. (McDonald) In fact, the pressures of society of that era leads to the suicide of the protagonist.Kate Chopin dared to write about topics that were forward-looking for women in the late xviii hundr eds and early nineteen hundreds. During this time women werent even capable of having overflowing knowledge to vote. If a woman chose any path in life that did not include marriage, then she was seen as a failure. In her writing, Chopin was groundbreaking in the area of feminism. The questions that are raised by the articles used for this essay, is where did she get the courage to tackle the topics that she did, and why didnt more women join here in their craft?Works CitedFaust, Langdon Lynn. American Women Writers. New York Inger. 1983.McDonald, Erin E. NECESSARILY light KATE CHOPINS GENDER-AWAKENING.24, May, 1999, http//www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/macdonald.htmlWilson, Robert. Feminine Sexuality and Passion Kate Chopins The Storm. The Universityof British Columbia, October 22, 1992. http//www.interchg.obc.ca/rw/eng304-1.htm.