Kate Chopin's The Awakening

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was first published, its popularity wasn't that of
modern day. In fact, it was widely rejected for years. Within the context, it
is considered a very liberal book from the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The ideas expressed within the content concern the women's movement and an
individual woman searching for who she really is. Ross C. Murfin in his
critical essay "The New Historicism and the Awakening", shows how Chopin uses
the entity of the hand to relate to both the entire women's issue and Edna
Pontlierre's self exploration:

"Chopin uses hands to raise the issues of women, property, self-possession, and
value. Women like Adele Ratignolle, represented by their perfectly pale or
gloved hands, are signs mainly of their husbands wealth, and therefor of what
Stange calls 'surplus value'. By insisting on supporting herself with her own
hands [through art] and having control of her own property [the place she moved
in to and her inheritance], Edna seeks to come into ...

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