“I give myself where I choose”: The Irrepressible Power of the Drive for Authenticity and Selfhood in Four Selected Stories of Kate Chopin

Year 2005, Issue: 21, 1 - 15, 01.04.2005

Rula B. Quawas

Abstract

In the first half of the nineteenth century, industrialization brought fundamental social and economic changes to America. The traditional agrarian society of the eighteenth century was rapidly transformed into a new urban, commercial, and industrial society. The emergence of this new capitalist and urbanized society greatly altered traditional family life and the relationship of the home to economic production. According to Rosemary R. Ruether, the basic economic processes of daily life had been traditionally centered around the home. Industrialization gradually separated economic production from the home. Male work “became increasingly disconnected with the home and was collectivized in a separate sphere. Women more and more lost their productive work, as well as their integration with male work” 196-97 . Their functions were reduced primarily to that of consumer, child-rearer, and domestic care-taker. Thus, “[a] split between the masculine work world and the feminine domestic support system arose” 23 .

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