Below is a synopsis of women's issues followed by a list of ideas in Kate Chopin's The Awakening that respond to feminist issues.

Women's concerns :

1. Economic dependence on men
   
2. No jobs for women
   
3. Today lack of equal pay for equal work or work becoming poorly paid if too many women go into a field.
   
4. Lack of valuation of women's work (specifically housework)
   Innervation due to lack of physical exercise
   
5. Lack of self-determination
   
6. Lack of divorce rights
   
7. No rights over her own body
   
8. women as object
   
9. the silencing of women
   
10. Not given education
    
11. If educated, not allowed to write for publication
    
12. women's concerns not important
    
13. women as nags, whiners
14. Women as child bearers, caretakers, and rearers
    (even women's professions are like this)
    
15. women feared as life-givers and as death-givers (too much power)

In the Awakening

1. Economic dependence on men
   
2. women as property (exchange value--potlatch)
   
3. symbols of women the sea (enclosing--amniotic sac)
   
1. the moon (changeable)
   
2. the madonna and the whore
   women seen at extremes--the angel in the house/the seductress
   society winks at men's "sowing their wild oats," but stones adulteresses. It permits prostitutes but controls them.
   
4. Aphrodite is goddess of erotic desire and artistic beauty
   
5. Chopin investigates how female desire can be given voice (remember that Walt Whitman had given voice to male desire).