Edna’s actions reflect changing feelings about what a woman’s life should be.1800’s saw a change in the status of women.Her fiction repeatedly deals with female characters’ efforts to find place, love, and autonomy in a society that denies these needs.Chopin denied that she was a feminist or a suffragette.“Regional literature incorporates the broader concept of sectional differences, but some critics have argued convincingly that the distinguishing characteristic that separates ‘local color’ writers from ‘regional’ writers is instead the exploitation of and condescension toward their subjects that the local color writers demonstrate” (From the Encyclopedia of Southern Literature).According to the Oxford Companion to American Literature, 'In local-color literature one finds the dual influence of romanticism and realism, since the author frequently looks away from ordinary life to distant lands, strange customs, or exotic scenes, but retains through minute detail a sense of fidelity and accuracy of description' (439).Characters find life dull and are often unhappy, but find touches of joy and beauty in life (M.Topics covered include love, marriage, parenthood, infidelity, and death.Characters drawn to present the reader with the illusion of actual experience.Presents an accurate imitation of life.Thus, it may signify that Edna's 'awakening' is really little more than a cruel, selfish rejection of the family she should instead cherish.Kate Chopin & The Awakening Edited by Nina Lee Braden Negatively, yellow is associated with adultery, overweening pride, an intellect which will feed only upon itself, cruelty, deceit, and cynicism. Yellow, being a herald of death, may foreshadow Edna's suicide. The Dictionary describes yellow as the most powerful of all the colors in its intensity and violence and says that it always overflows 'the limits with which one tries to confine it.' This is descriptive of Edna's awakened personality, which overflows the conventions of Creole society in an intense and, ultimately, violent way. At her party, the table has a pale yellow satin cover the candles are burning under yellow silk shades there are yellow roses and Edna is wearing a gown described as having both a 'golden shimmer' and a 'yellow shimmer' (569-71). YELLOW-Edna is repeatedly associated with the color yellow.

The great awakening kate chopin