| Summary: | Women and marriage become the major topics in nineteenth century
American literature. Married women are portrayed discontent in their marital life.
Those women pictured rebellious, disobedient, and breaking the social regulations
associated with the construction of gender role. Edna Pontellier in The Awakening
is one of the women who break the boundaries of married women.
Women condition in marital life as portrayed in literature arising questions
regarding to the occurrences they are facing, what makes the women discontented
and why they want to escape from the marriage institution. In connection to this
particular issue, this thesis aims to explore the position of 19
th
century women in
marriage.
Employing Carole Pateman�s postulate on sexual contract in critically
reading the novel, it is found that marriage is long term relationship which brings
two different genders together. The union of two different genders involves the
hierarchy in gender. The relationship between man and woman in marriage
becomes unequal relationship, because they are in different position.
Becoming a wife who does rebellion toward the boundaries she gets in her
marital life, Edna Pontellier fails to fight against the system and convention in
society. She had to take the consequences which bring her to death. Despite of the
fact that she failed, yet Edna�s rebellion is the evidence that as a woman she has
already awakened from the domination and oppression she gets in marriage and
she finally realizes her position as a wife.
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