Examination of the Main Characters in The Awakening by Kate Chopin and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Examination of the Main Characters in The Awakening by Kate Chopin and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Both Kate Chopin’s novella The Awakening and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper explore the theme of female autonomy and the oppressive roles women play within society. In each work, the main characters struggle with their personal desires, societal expectations, and the limitations placed upon them by gender roles. Although the characters are situated in different contexts—one in a late 19th-century Creole society and the other in an isolated domestic setting—their experiences are similar in their portrayal of women attempting to break free from the confining structures around them. Below is an analysis of the main characters in both works and how they are used to explore these themes.

1. Edna Pontellier in The Awakening

• Background and Personality: Edna Pontellier is the protagonist of The Awakening. She is a 28-year-old married woman living in late 19th-century Louisiana. Edna is the wife of Léonce Pontellier, a wealthy, well-to-do businessman, and the mother of two young children. On the surface, she fits the ideal of the domestic wife and mother, fulfilling her societal obligations. However, Edna is deeply dissatisfied with her role. Throughout the novella, she experiences a growing awareness of her desire for independence, sexual freedom, and self-expression.

• Struggles with Identity: Edna’s internal conflict arises from the societal expectations of women during her time, which emphasized domesticity, motherhood, and subservience to male authority. Despite being married to a successful man and living in relative comfort, Edna begins to feel suffocated by her prescribed role. She starts to question the values of her society, rejecting traditional gender roles and the expectations placed upon her. As she becomes more aware of her desires, she seeks to define her own identity, independent of the roles imposed on her.

• Awakening and Rebellion: The key theme of the novella is Edna’s “awakening” to her desires and individuality. She begins to reject the traditional expectations of a wife and mother, engaging in an affair with Robert Lebrun and exploring her own desires and artistic talents. Her awakening is portrayed as both liberating and tragic, as it ultimately leads her to a realization that societal and familial expectations cannot be fully escaped. Her final decision to drown herself in the sea is her ultimate act of defiance, symbolizing both a release from societal constraints and a rejection of a world that offers no place for her desires.

• Significance: Edna Pontellier represents the struggle of women who sought autonomy and self-expression in an era that confined them to rigid roles. Her awakening reflects the clash between individual desires and the weight of societal expectations, ultimately revealing the deep limitations women faced during this time. Her tragic end underscores the difficulty of reconciling personal freedom with the responsibilities imposed by society.

2. The Woman in The Yellow Wallpaper

• Background and Personality: The main character in The Yellow Wallpaper is an unnamed woman, who is typically referred to as the narrator. She is an upper-class woman suffering from what is diagnosed as a “temporary nervous depression” following the birth of her child. As part of her treatment, her husband, John, a physician, prescribes a rest cure that confines her to a room in their rented mansion, where she is forbidden from writing, working, or engaging in any stimulating activity. The room she is confined to has yellow wallpaper, which becomes a focal point of her psychological deterioration.

• Struggles with Identity: The narrator’s identity is strongly influenced by the treatment prescribed by her husband and the social norms of the time. John represents the patriarchal medical establishment, which dictates that women are fragile and need to be controlled for their own good. As she is kept in isolation and forbidden from doing anything she enjoys, including writing, she begins to lose touch with her sense of self. Her struggle is not just with her illness, but with her position in a society that expects women to be passive, obedient, and domestically focused.

• Mental Deterioration and Rebellion: Over the course of the story, the narrator’s obsession with the yellow wallpaper grows. She begins to see patterns in the wallpaper, and eventually believes that there is a woman trapped within it. This vision represents her own entrapment, as she feels imprisoned by the domestic sphere and the rigid gender roles imposed upon her. As her mental state deteriorates, she becomes increasingly determined to free the woman she believes is trapped within the wallpaper. Her eventual act of tearing down the wallpaper symbolizes her desire for freedom and a rejection of the passive, subjugated role that society expects her to play. The story ends ambiguously, with the narrator fully descending into madness as she believes she has “escaped” the wallpaper by crawling over her husband’s body.

• Significance: The narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper embodies the psychological toll of the oppressive treatment of women during the 19th century. Her confinement to the room and the enforced passivity she experiences reflect the broader societal constraints placed on women, particularly in terms of their autonomy and intellectual activity. The story critiques the medical and social practices that treated women as fragile and incapable of participating in meaningful intellectual or creative endeavors. The narrator’s descent into madness represents the ultimate consequence of this suppression, illustrating how the stifling of a woman’s identity can lead to a complete breakdown of her sense of self.

3. Comparison of Edna and the Narrator

• Themes of Oppression: Both Edna Pontellier and the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper experience a profound sense of entrapment within their respective roles as wives and mothers. Edna’s rebellion against societal expectations is marked by her pursuit of love and independence, while the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper experiences a literal and psychological entrapment, her desire for autonomy crushed by the medical treatment imposed by her husband. Both women are constrained by their gender roles, yet their reactions to these constraints are different. Edna seeks liberation through defiance, while the narrator is gradually driven to madness by her powerlessness.

• Awakening and Self-Expression: Edna’s awakening involves a conscious rejection of her roles as wife and mother, as she actively seeks out experiences of passion and artistic expression. The narrator, in contrast, has no agency over her life, and her “awakening” is not a conscious choice but a descent into madness brought on by isolation and restriction. Both characters struggle to reclaim their sense of self, but while Edna does so through defiance and self-exploration, the narrator’s journey is marked by an increasing loss of identity.

• Tragic Outcomes: Both characters’ stories end tragically, though the nature of their tragedies differs. Edna’s suicide can be seen as a final rejection of a world that offers no room for her desires and autonomy, while the narrator’s descent into madness symbolizes the destructive effects of the rigid gender roles and the medical establishment’s treatment of women as passive and incapable.

4. Conclusion: The Struggle for Female Autonomy

The main characters in The Awakening and The Yellow Wallpaper are both deeply concerned with their roles as women in society and the limits imposed on their autonomy. Edna Pontellier’s journey is an attempt to break free from these roles, while the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper is trapped within them. Both characters embody the plight of women who sought greater independence and self-expression during a time when they were expected to adhere to rigid, confining gender roles. Their struggles, though different in their outcomes, highlight the societal pressures placed on women and the devastating effects these pressures can have on a woman’s identity and mental health. Through these characters, both Chopin and Gilman explore the complex intersection of gender, identity, and societal expectations, offering poignant critiques of the ways women were restricted in their pursuit of personal freedom.