Roles of the Woman at the late 19th Century The book, The Awakening, portrays the routine daily life of women and men during this era.. The men always provided the bread and butter for their whole family. The women where seen mainly as an item on a peddle stool that the men had possession of. Plenty of women during this time just put up with how they where treated but many also formulated another idea of what their role should be. These types of women were portrayed by the character Edna Pontellier in the book. She went through the book exploring her idea and it was the death of her at the end.
In the beginning of The Awakening, Edna was in the full role of the idealized women. She obeyed her husband and did things for her kids. You find that she doesn’t like how she lives and then adopts the idea that women can be fully independent. She breaks off from the path that is expected from a woman and starts to rebel. She falls in love with another man while still married, where it is the custom for women to just stick to insignificant flirting, Edna takes the flirting seriously. The other women in this book are said to just participate in a modest flirting but to where it won’t give them looks. People soon start to become aware of that she is acting a bit out of the ordinary for a woman and start to become suspicious of her.
In the book, it also shows a little of the typical daily routine of a woman. As we look back on how 19th century women lived, we see that they were like imprisoned birds that could not illustrate their full potential or pursue their desires. Edna tries to at least pursue her passion as a painter. This also gives an excuse for her not to participate in her womanly activities like tending to the children. Edna usually goes to a dinner at a friend’s house to socialize or goes to the beach alone or with others. Later in the book, she becomes more detached from her husband and distant from her children. I think that many women would like to do what Edna has done but they fear that they will be a pariah, and that is a big transition from what they know already. For what the normal or in spoken women fear to do, Edna does not contain that fear. She soon gets her own smaller home to live in by herself to claim that she is no longer owned by anyone. After moving in she continues to love Robert but also has an affair. So far, she has walked very far from the traditional path that every other women has been taking. She becomes increasingly unsure about how she should continue her rebellion against the traditional practice of the Man-Woman relationship. In the end, she was just hurting herself, by isolating herself from the rest of society and then she ends up taking her life by drowning. From what Edna or who did act like Edna, many other women will follow and instead of becoming a social outcast, they will start a meaning for women in the future times.