The Awakening

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Edna and her husband, Leonce, we see that men treated women as if they were nothing more than possessions or property. They had no respect for their wives, mothers, or even their daughters as they constantly treated them like housemaids who were there to answer to their every call. Even Edna's father thinks that his daughter is her husband's property. We see this when he says "You are far too lenient, too lenient by far, Leonce. Authority, coercion are what is needed. Put your foot down good and hard; the only way to manage a wife" (Chopin 663). This is her own father telling her husband that he needs to be tougher on her. Chopin is clearly showing the inequality of women here. Nowadays, you would never find a father telling his son-in-law to be harder on his daughter. This was something that Edna would not accept. Chopin cleverly adds that it was this same treatment from her father that killed her mother. "The colonel was perhaps unaware he had coerced his own wife into her ...

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