Women's Quest For Selfhood And Freedom

Kate Chop's The Awakening and John Fowles'The French Lieutenant's Woman are two classical novels that shed light on the women's selfhood discovery and freedom seeking. Although the two novels were written in different style, different social context, and even the authors of different sex, we can still find these two works comparable due to the authors'consciousness of women's existence as well as their coincident dealing with women's struggle for self-hood and freedom. On the other hand, the restricted values and rigid moralities that the two heroines-Edna Pontellier in The Awakening and Sarah Woodruff in The French Lieutenant's Woman fight against could be dated back to the same historical period-the Victorian Era.The thesis aims to make a comparative study of the two women characters'quest for selfhood and freedom in The Awakening and The French Lieutenant's Woman through detailed textual analysis and will find out the common approaches that Edna and Sarah both adopt during their course of self-emancipation. After a specific research on the historical context of Victorian era in terms of its social conditions, patriarchal pattern and Victorian womanhood, we find out that both of Edna and Sarah's fight include a step by step rejection of four cardinal virtues of Victorian womanhood-submissiveness, domesticity, piety and purity. Furthermore, through a detailed study on Edna and Sarah's course of questing for selfhood and freedom, we find out the common means for women to attain their selfhood and ultimate freedom: an intelligence to understand one's existence, a life of solitude to preserve the unique existence and "a room of one's own" to ultimately realize the existential freedom.The significance of the two characters-Edna and Sarah lies in their voicing of women's quest for unique existence and freedom of choice. Edna and Sarah have successfully transcended the spiritual boundaries of the Victorian Mores and patriarchal social pattern. They have also successfully transformed themselves into two "new women", making a similar "statement of independence" that they could sacrifice everything but selfhood and would rather give up everything but freedom.