The Awakening :: essays research papers

The wakeIn the novella The Awakening by Kate Chopin, deuce supporting characters, Madame Ratignolle and white perch Reisz, represent two distinctively different females of the Victorian Age. Madame Ratignolle serves as societys idea of the exemplification woman. There is nonhing subtle or hidden about her charms her yellowish pink is all there, flaming and apparent the spun-g senile hair that neither comb nor confining pen could restrain the blue eyes that are like nothing but sapphires two lips that pout, that are so red one could think of cherries or some early(a) delicious crimson fruit in looking at them. Her steady is complemented by her extreme devotion to her family. They come first in her life. She is the quintessential mother-woman. Mother-women are women who idolized their children, worship their husbands, and esteem it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and ascend wings as ministering angels. She gave up her individuality by taking coupling vo ws and became one half of the Ratignolle family. The Ratignolles understood each other perfectly. If ever a fusion of two human beings into one has ever been accomplished on this sphere it is surely this union. Madame Ratignolle has surrendered to her husbands world as proper wives at the m were expected to do. She obeys her husband and assumes the responsibility of keeping him satisfied. She would not consent to rest with Edna when Monsieur Ratignolle was alone, because he detested above all things being alone.While Madame Ratignolle is the ideal Victorian woman, mademoiselle Reisz is a disagreeable little woman, no longer young, who quarrels with or so everyone, owing to a temper which is self-assertive and a disposition to tread on the rights of others. When Edna asks the proprietor of the neighborhood grocery store if he knew where mademoiselle Reisz had moved, the man answers that he thanks heaven that she had leave the neighborhood, and was equally thankful that he did no t know where she had gone. Mademoiselle Reisz is in no way the beautiful Aphrodite that Madame Ratignolle is. She is an old woman who is past her physical prime, although the reader gets the impression that, during her prime, her looks still left something to be desired. The community snickers at her because she wears false hair has poor taste in fashion. Mademoiselle Reisz has always lived on the top floors of apartment buildings, which takes her far away from reality and the problems of others.