The purpose of this research is to examine the main characters in the novella The Awakening by Kate Chopin and the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman with a view toward showing that the assertion of distinctively adult female identity in what is profoundly a world where the identities of women are not valued carries enormous personal risk, not only for the individuals involved but also for the well-being of the societies in which they function. In short, as can be seen in a comparison of the main characters of Chopin's and Gilman's storioes, that assertion can easily be interpreted as madness, or it can lead to madness, or it can have other negative effects.
These consequences are experienced by the main characters in slightly different ways in The Awakening and "The Yellow Wallpaper," although for similar reasons. Edna, in the former story, and the unnamed wife in the latter, are each in the position of being obliged to respond to the reality of marriages that are grounded in patriarchal society. Indeed, the marriage in each story is a microcosmic reproduction of the macrocosmic cultural norms. The response of each wife in the case has the effect of erasing her presence from both marriage and culture, but the shape that each response assumes shows how differently configured such erasure can be.
At one level, the character of Edna Pontellier in The Awakening describes the intensely subjective assertion of a right to a new (or anyway distinctive) social identity as a woman in a world not of her making. Though at the center of that world's material advantages, Edna is nevertheless alien, estranged, trapped. Her emotional truth is an intense, unre lenting internal struggle that surfaces in encounters with the boundaries and personalities of a sharply defined social mil ieu. To put it another way, Chopin develops such encounter as the core conflict of Edna's being. It can be seen in the small domestic mome...