Edna vs. Charity: The Battle Between Acceptance and Happiness - Essay Example

The awakening is a story of a woman, Edna Pontellier, trying to change the society’s social thoughts on the issue of womanliness and motherhood. Her attempt in changing the society’s thoughts is thwarted, and her failure is eminent when she commits suicide. This unit examines the battle between acceptance and happiness of the novel’s protagonist characters Edna and Charity. Edna and Charity in Their Battle for Acceptance The Awaking by Kate Chopin depicts Edna as a woman who struggles to achieve the necessities in life such as winning people’s affection and obtaining things.

Her life is like a pendulum as her problems keep on rotating around her and she has no permanent solutions to her problems. Chopin shows how Edna who is used to the norms of her southern society is forced to change her traditions when she weds Leonce. He is a believer and a Creole in the extensive conviction. Edna vacates from her home in the southern and joins her husband to reside in Louisiana. Secondly, she struggles to accept her new ambiance, but in the process, she becomes bumpy and confused.

Thirdly, Edna is sentimental that she misplaced her individuality and happiness when she got married and left her southern home. Fourthly, Edna battles to conform to her husband authoritative and coercive character an issue she views negatively to be a barrier to her happiness. Edna’s husband believes that she should be a conventional woman and this brew conflict in their home when Edna contradicts his code. Chopin gives an example when Leonce criticize her for bathing publicly on the beach.

He tells Edna that she will be burnt past recognition by the heat on the beach. Edna in an effort to prevail her husband’s confidence from his constant negative approach towards her grows tired. Lastly, desperate and craving for affection she meets Lebrun and cataract in love with him. Chopin shows how she battles with her emotions to him be the center of her focus. She succeeds partly in this, but is later devastated when she is abandoned by Lebrun. When Edna is defeated in her battle for acceptance, she resorts to commit suicide(Stevenson, 429).

Summer by Edith Wharton depicts Charity as a protagonist who experiences a challenge of coming up with an evil chimera to achieve the demands of an adult life. Charity is a youthful lass who is learning about her sexual mellowness. The change she is experiencing makes her a target for many suitors. Wharton shows how Charity battles within her inner life to make right choices of what she wants. She has to free herself from the degrading customary illusion and realties that life conveys to her as a package (Stevenson, 411).

Charity has a self conflict when she decides to ignore the society’s norm, and follow her path. Wharton describes ways Charity battles with her prevailing financial situation not to raise her kid in the abject poverty, and turn out to be a prostitute to provide for herself and her kid. According to Wharton, Charity marries Royall who accepts her and her kid, in her battle for acceptance for herself and her kids (Stevenson, 414). Edna and Charity in Their Battle for Happiness The Awaking by Kate Chopin depicts Edna to be a woman who is well ware of her rights, since she did not sit and allow anybody to trample on her daily affairs.

The society believed that women role during Edna times was being in charge of the kids and