Essentialism within Kate Chopin's The Awakening.
Kate Chopin's 1899 novel, The Awakening, takes place in the late 1800s in Grand Isle, a summer holiday resort popular with the wealthy inhabitants of nearby New Orleans. The main character, Edna, takes a break from New Orleans life to vacation there with her husband and children. An important aspect of this novel is the Creole society, which is described to be very permissive, open, and liberating. Women in this society are allowed to openly discuss the intimacies of life, such as pregnancy, undergarments, and love affairs. They openly flirt with married men, and this is completely acceptable. This type of behavior completely contrasts with the strict and proper society of New Orleans, where woman were expected to be prim, proper, and charming. Respectable women in New Orleans society stayed at home and bore children, tended to their household, hosted luncheons, and abided by very rigid rules of behavior. The societal expectations placed on Edna were acceptable and normal until she was placed in an altered environment, in which case was a completely different society. .
Essentialism is an especially strong form of background assumption. One assumes stereotypes placed on women are factual. According to Ian Hacking, a person's gender is an essential element of a person's being; therefore gender is not inevitable only in the present state of affairs. Essentialism basically emphasizes roles within genders, believing that what is socially acceptable, is the real true essence of things. Women stayed at home and cooked, while men left home each day to work. Though the Industrial Revolution and the feminist movement were beginning to emerge in the late 1800s, American women's roles were absolutely those of devoted wives and mothers, spending their days caring for their children, performing domestic duties, and ensuring the happiness of their husbands.