Kate Chopin’s “Athénaïse”: A 19th-Century Married Woman’s Pursuit of Selfhood

Abstract

This paper aims to explore a 19th-century married woman’s pursuit of selfhood in the oppressive institution of marriage and examine the meaning and importance her challenge has in Kate Chopin’s “Athénaïse”. Most of Chopin’s short stories and novels set in Louisiana feature female characters of Louisiana Creole background and her highest interests are feminist issues related to marriage, sexuality, and motherhood as women’s oppressive experiences in the Victorian American South where true womanhood was believed to be fulfilled only through marriage and motherhood. One of Chopin’s representative works, “Athénaïse” ends with a happy vision for marriage, which has disappointed some critics expecting the protagonist’s more active role against the oppressive social institution. However, within a moral safety zone in which a runaway wife returns to her husband with the pleasure of pregnancy, Chopin insinuates two important feminist issues, women’s desire for selfhood and sexual awakening. Athénaïse’s challenge has shown that a woman is also the subject of desires, not ‘the other’ defined by men, wanting independent selfhood and creating her own life. Another achievement “Athénaïse” has made is presenting an alternative vision for the male-dominated Victorian marriage through the change of a man who had patriarchal attitudes toward women’s role. He realizes the marriage based on male domination over the wife is the same as slavery, deciding to respect his wife’s free will and choice. This is a remarkable change in that he has admitted his wife as an independent subject with her own desires and free will. The fact that the happy ending is the outcome of a woman’s pursuit of selfhood and a man’s change of attitudes toward a female subject indicates that the conclusion of “Athénaïse” is not just a conventional happy ending but a positive vision for marriage.