CONFLICT WITH SOCIETAL GENDER ROLES: A COMPARATIVE FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF EDNA PONTELLIER AND NORA HELMER

Abstract

Kate Chopin, an American novelist and short story writer representing women’s revolt against patriarchal rule, positions women in the center of her works. She deals with women's experiences in the context of gender roles, their conflicts with society, their discovery of their own bodies and the following awakening. Henrik Ibsen is one of the most important writers of Norwegian drama. Similarly, Ibsen highlights the individual's conflict with society as a kind of alienation on the axis of individual-society antagonism. Edna Pontellier, the protagonist in Chopin's novel The Awakening (1899), and Nora Helmer in Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House (1879), do not fit into the gender roles imposed on them by their societies. Both characters gain self-awareness through the discovery of their uniqueness. Henrik Ibsen and Kate Chopin wrote realistically about the problems their female characters encountered in the patriarchal social structure and their conflicts with social codes. The lives and choices of Edna and Nora, who both have the duties of pleasing their spouses, meeting the needs of the house and taking care of their children within the encompassing structure of the institution of marriage, are similar to each other. In this article, the lives of Edna and Nora, who are the objects of the patriarchal structure in the triangular relationship of man - child - family, will be examined comparatively in terms of their contradictions with society, their journey to self-discovery, their alienation and choices.