Comparing Edna Pontellier and Adele in Kate Chopins The Awakening :: comparison compare contrast essays

Comparing Enda and Adele in The Awakening   In The Awakening by Kate Chopin, the setting is in the late 1800s on Grand Isle in Louisiana. The main character of the story is Edna Pontellier who is non a Creole. Other important characters be Adele Ratignolle, Mr. Ratgnolle, Robert Lebrun, and Leonce Pontellier who are alone Creoles. In the Creole society the men are dominant. Seldom do the Creoles accept outsiders to their social circle, and women are expected to provide well-kept homes and have many children. Edna and Adele are friends who are very different because of their the charge they were brought up and they way they treat their hubbys. Adele is a loyal wife who always obeys her husbands commands. Edna is a woman who strays from her husband and does not obey her husbands commands. Kate Chopin uses Adele to emphasize the differences between her and Edna.   Edna Pontellier is not a Creole, so her relationship with her husband is difficult. In her husbands eyes she h as failed in her duties as a wife and as a mother to her own children. What Endas husband expects from her is never what she does. Leonce comes home in the middle of the night and talks to Edna while she is sleeping. Then he tells her that Raoul one of their sons is sick and tells her to get up and check on him. Edna had never really had the desire to have children but she did anyway. She was not a mother-woman because she would rather be alone sometimes she did not feel she had to be with her children two dozen hours a day. If one Ednas boys ....took a tumble whilst at play, he would not apt rush crying to his mothers arms for comfort he would more believably pick himself up(16). Enda never felt that she fit in with Creole society because she ...most forcibly was their entire absence of prudery(19). The Creoles would talk about things such as childbirth and would flirt with others and not mean anything. Yet Edna would never dream of talking about her childbirths with anyone or f lirting unless she meant it. Creole women devoted their all in all lives to their husbands where Enda was carefree and did as she pleased. She was carefree because she would go out onto the beach with only a sundress and a little hat on when she was suppose to be all covered up so she would not become sun burnt.