Feminine Consciousness In Kate Chopin's Stories

As an excellent female writer in the history of American literature in the nineteenth century,Kate Chopin's considerable numbers of works are related to women and about the living conditions and fate of women at the time.In that patriarchal society women were revolved around their husbands and children and treated as collateral for their husbands.The focus of many scholars' studies of Kate Chopin's works are limited to the single works,or a comparative analysis between one of her works and other writers' works,and few studies are involved the combination of female images in Kate Chopin's numerous works,making an analysis for the female images and a systematic study of the change and development of their feminine consciousness.Employed by the theory of the Other in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex,the paper attempts to make an interpretation of Kate Chopin's three short stories,namely,Desiree's Baby,A Respectable Woman and The Storm from a feminist perspective.Consisting of five parts,the paper takes Kate Chopin's three works: Desiree's Baby,A Respectable Woman and The Storm as research object,analyzing the female images and studying the development and evolution of their feminine consciousness in her short stories,the contents as following:Chapter One firstly introduces the author,the background of her creation,her life experience,her literary achievements,and a brief introduction to the author's three works that created in the different creative periods.Then,the literary reviews on the three works are follows.Lastly,it comes to a brief introduction to feminist criticism and the theory of the Other in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex,and the structure of the paper.Chapter Two starts from the feminine consciousness in Kate Chopin's short stories,mainly focusing on three levels.First of all,it describes the female images of the southern United States in the 19 th century and their status in family life and society.Second,a definition of feminine consciousness coming first,then,Kate Chopin's feminine consciousness was clarified.The works can best reflect the writer's thoughts at the time.Chopin sympathizes with the situation of women and hopes that they can achieve independence,freedom and equal treatment.Finally,there is an analysis of feminine consciousness in Chopin's works.Chapter Three is the analysis to the images of protagonists in the novels of Desiree's Baby,A Respectable Woman and The Storm.Playing the role of an angel in the house,Desiree is a representative of the suppressed women at that time.In A Respectable Woman,Mrs.Baroda is a struggling woman in a struggling situation.Totally different from Desiree and Mrs.Baroda,Calixta is an awakening woman that dares to challenge the tradition and pursue happiness.Chapter Four combines the heroines in the novels to analyze the evolution of their feminine consciousness.This chapter analyzes two aspects,one is the women's status in gender relations and the other is the change of their attitudes toward to sexual consciousness.For the first part,in genders relations,Desiree is always in a passive position and she is the Other.Mrs.Baroda has her own privacy in her family life and a certain freedom of discourse.And Calixta,on the surface,is a virtuous wife and mother,serving for the family,but in action,she dares to pursue happiness and enjoys sex like a man.For the second part,throughout the text,there is no description of Desiree's sexual consciousness.In her husband's eyes,she is nothing but a tool for fertility,playing the role of perpetuating the family.For Desiree,who obeys to her husband's arrangements in every aspect,she exists to serve her husband and the whole family,without power and her sexual consciousness is completely repressed.Mrs.Baroda is a decent woman in a struggling situation.After experiencing an inner struggle,she made her choice and took an important step in the end of the text.Having an intimate contact with her former lover,Alcee,Calixta's sexual consciousness has been ignited,and finally it has awakened.In the last,Calixta enjoyed sex and realized her self-awakening.Chapter Five is the conclusion.From the perspective of Beauvoir's feminist theory,the chapter once again expounds the interpretation to Chopin's short stories,Desiree's Baby,A Respectable Woman and The Storm.Through the understanding of Kate Chopin's feminine consciousness,the analysis of the female images and the evolution of their feminine consciousness,readers can have a deeper understanding of Kate Chopin and her works.