The following paper is in regard to Mary Wollstonecraft's novel Maria, or the Wrongs of Women and Kate Chopin's novel titled The Awakenings. The two stories have a similar plot and both discuss the oppression of women in the institution of marriage. This paper will include how the two main characters in each story, Maria (in Maria) and Edna (in The Awakenings) challenge the oppressive ideology by finding a new love and how they also encountered problems as long the way.
             "It was when the face and figure of great tragedian began to haunt her imagination and stir her senses. The persistence of the infatuation lent it an aspect of genuineness. The hopelessness of it colored it with the lofty tones of a great passion." (Awakening's, 1026) A passion that ultimately lost its novelty and was allocated to the shelf that held obscure yet relaxed delightful remembrances. The tragedian keeps fellowship with a visiting cavalry officer and an engaged gentleman. Though, in reality, the gentleman is probably no longer engaged, he will remain so in the mind of Edna Pontellier: one of the images of the infatuations of a "little miss."(1026) With respect to her marriage to Leonce Pontellier, Edna is inhibited, not with the man himself, but with the concept he represents. When leaving Mississippi on Leonce's arm, she defied her family's wish that she marries a non-Catholic. Cast to that equation a healthy dose of flattery from her intended and their union is as good as cemented. This is how Edna comes to be ensconced in the inescapable institution of marriage. One would presume that the speaking of the vows would discontinue her youthful allure, but that is not the case. Both the holy bounds of wedlock and the remonstrations of society hail to constrict her. Edna Pontellier experiences one last great infatuation. However, this beat upon her soul reverberates into a feeling that far surpasses what s...