The Awakening - An Antifeminist Novel Anonymous 12th Grade

A woman sits alone in her empty living room, overtaken by an unbearable ennui. She sits cross-legged, with one elbow propped up on the faded, beige armrest, and the other resting on her thigh. She sighs with exasperation as she patiently awaits her children’s arrival from school. She understands her role all too well, and mechanically greets her husband, whose demeanor reeks of vanilla and infidelity. He is in high spirits and thus, so is she. He claims that he is overexerted, that it has been a long day. He sleeps rather soundly, his chest rising and falling evenly. She, however, lies awake, and bewails the redundancy of her life. The children are asleep, in separate realms of and unconsciousness, and she turns wearily away from her husband, her mind wrapped in discontent.

This is a fate that, in some ways, a classic of modern literature grappled with. Kate Chopin, the writer of the classic “feminist” novel The Awakening, was 49 when she completed the book. To modern day society, the book is critically acclaimed for its strong and diverse standpoints on feminism and self-identity. However, when Chopin released the book in her time, it got disastrous reviews, most of the critics being older men who profoundly disapproved of her...