Question

"The Awakening" by Kate Chopin

Answer 1

Birds are an important part of Chopin’s novel. They represent the female soul or more precisely the female soul and its place in a patriarchal society. In the context of the novel they symbolize the rejection, by the main character of the place society reserves by default for the female protagonist, Edna Pontellier. These lines clearly foreshadow the feminist rejection of patriarchal social mores by the main character. The fact that such lines are uttered by a caged parrot is not fortuitous. The parrot personifies women, who are tired of parroting what the male society and their male husbands tell them to do, think or say. Women are also caged in a society that denies them their own choices and agency as free individuals.