Kate Chopin's "The Awakening", is a story about Edna Pontellier. A nineteenth century women looking for her self and discovering new and magnificent qualities in herself and the people she meets during her summer vacation with her husband and children on Grand Isle. This work was considered highly controversial at its time of publishing in 1899 because of its overtly feminist themes; because this is not a story about her marriage or her motherhood but instead a story about the woman herself and her thoughts about life. Thoughts which are sometimes radical, sensual and certainly autonomous and separate from her role as a wife or mother, an idea as yet unexplored in English literature and quite challenging of the Chopin's patriarchal society . This is an excellent piece of literature to explore through the lens of feminist criticism. Feminist criticism rejects the genderless mind, finding that the "imagination" cannot evade the conscious or unconscious structures of gender. {Lee,......
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