Clothing: A Symbol In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening

In the novel, The Awakening, Kate Chopin takes Edna Pontellier on a journey of self-discovery. In doing this, she uses many symbols to show the relationship between Edna and the world. Clothing, or rather, the lack thereof, displays this relationship well. As Edna progresses throughout the novel, she discards more and more layers of the confining “clothing” that surrounds her body and soul. By taking off her clothing, one piece at a time, she disobeys …

…something totally for her own reasons and rules. Throughout the novel, as Edna sheds herself of the clothing and possessions that surround her, she becomes more liberated, free, her own woman. The clothing represents the society that confines her and the independence that stripping the clothing gives her enlightens her soul. Kate Chopin uses clothing as a way of conveying the social injustice imposed upon women in the Victorian age in which they were trapped.