The Awakening Kate Chopin

Critical Essay "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin
"Kate Chopin was writing before the phrase "women's movement" had been coined"(Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography), but the stirrings of this twentieth century movement were beginning to simmer in the United States. Late 19th century customs demanded that woman be defined in relationship to the men in their life - wife, mother, daughter - and not as separate human beings with a defined-self outside their family relationships. Society strongly discouraged women's attempts to develop a separate and independent self. Kate Chopin's work was praise…