Kenneth Eble states, “…She undertook to give the unsparing truth about women’s submerged life” (2). Speaking solely about Kate Chopin, this quote puts emphasis upon Chopin’s disputes with her society. She used her writing as a technique to indirectly explicate her life by the means of narrating her stories through the characters she created. Kate Chopin was one of the modern writers of her time, one who wrote novels concentrating on the common social matters related to women. Her time period consisted of other female authors that focused on the same central theme during the era: exposing the unfairness of the patriarchal society, and women’s search for selfhood, and their search for identity. In Chopin’s novel The Awakening, she incorporates the themes mentioned above to illustrate the veracity of life as she understood it. A literary work approached by the feminist critique seeks to raise awareness of the importance and higher qualities of women. Women in literature may uncover their strengths or find their independence, raising their own self recognition. Several critics deem Chopin as one of the leading feminists of her age because she was willing to publish stories that dealt with women becoming self-governing, who stood up for themselves and novels that explored the difficulties that they faced during the time. Chopin scrutinized sole problems and was not frightened to suggest that women desired something that they were not normally permitted to have: independence. Chopin’s decision to focus on and emphasize the imbalances between the sexes is heavily influenced by her upbringing, her feelings towards society, and the era she subsisted in.
How Chopin was raised and educated not only inspired her but it also assisted her with her writing capabilities. On February 8th, 1851 Chopin was born Katherine O’Flaherty, to Thomas O’Flaherty and Eliza O’Flaherty. It is said that Chopin’s father, a businessman from Ireland, proved to be one of her first influences in...