Perkins is an instructor of American literature and film. In this essay, Perkins analyzes Chopin's exploration of the difficulties inherent in the establishment of a nonconventional marriage.

A recurring theme in much of Kate Chopin's work is women's difficult struggle for emancipation. In her article for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Tonette Bond Inge notes that as Chopin explores this theme, she does not avoid "showing the sacrifices and suffering associated with the journey to self-realization." This struggle becomes the main focus of Chopin's masterpiece The Awakening as it documents Edna Pontillier's journey from the restrictions of marriage to a discovery of self that affords her a sense, albeit an ironic one, of freedom. As it traces Edna's difficult process of awakening to selfhood, the novel reflects society's determination to force women to conform to expected roles.

As in The Awakening, most of Chopin's fiction chronicles the...