The Quest for Independence in Henry James&rsquo;s The Portrait of a Lady and Kate Chopin's The Awakening a Feminist Comparative Study

Tawfeeq, Layth Taher; Jasim, Mohanad Ahmed

doi:10.25130/Lang.10.2.P1.25

	The Quest for Independence in Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady and Kate Chopin's The Awakening a Feminist Comparative Study
Journal of Language Studies
Volume 10, Issue 2, Part 1, June 2026, Pages 516-532 PDF (590.67 K)
Document Type: Original Article
DOI: 10.25130/Lang.10.2.P1.25
Authors
Layth Taher Tawfeeq¹; Mohanad Ahmed Jasim²
¹English Department, College of Arts, Tikrit University, Tikrit, Iraq
²College of Science, Tikrit University, Tikrit, Iraq
Abstract
At the core of feminist text, Henry James and Kate Chopin’s works always stands out to portray women seeking freedom. The paper will discuss James’s The Portrait of a Lady and Chopin’s The Awakening, represented by Isabel Archer and Edna Pontellier as the main characters in these novels. The discussion will be based on comparative analysis that include women status, the conflict between their needs to be recognized as human beings and what the society expect from them as wives, and mothers. James presented those issues in The Portrait of a Lady by laying out different events to confront the obstacles set by the institution of marriage and society during the nineteenth century. Chopin’s in The Awakening approaches these issues differently, as she questions the whole institution of marriage through Edna’s awakening as she follows her romantic and artistic desires which lead to her unfortunate end. Edna and Isabel deal with multiple issues both psychological and societal which can be approached to pinpoint the impact of these issues and women fight for recognition. The best obvious way to discuss these works by implementing feminist discourse, the discussion highlights the enduring correlation of both works to debates of gender equality, identity and the fight for recognition.
Keywords
autonomy; feminism; gender rules; identity; social norms

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