The Awakening | Motif 1 | 60second Recap®
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by Jenny Sawyer
So Edna Pontillier is ambivalent about motherhood? When Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening, that was just not the way respectable women were supposed to think.
But this is the story of a woman's struggle to reconcile her desires with society's expectations. In the late-1890s, society's expectation was that a mother would put her child's interests above her own. The virtue of motherhood was unquestioned and inviolate.
Which takes us straight to one of The Awakening's main motifs.
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