Quest of Agency and Identity: A Feminist Reading of Kate Chopin’s “A Respectable Woman”

Abstract

The present paper critically examines how Kate Chopin’s short story, “A Respectable Woman” encapsulates women’s aspiration for their unconditional agency, distinct personal identity, and the subsequent existential authenticity. It focuses the female protagonist Mrs. Baroda’s mental restrictions caused by social norms and her struggle to overcome them. By applying Simon de Beauvoir’s notions of transcendence and immanence, it analyses how Mrs. Baroda strives to affirm unconditional and unproblematic agency as an individual as a part of her attempts to negotiate her sexuality, freedom and identity. The paper posits that Chopin defies the contemporary patriarchal codes of the 19th century American society as she reveals women’s awareness of their precarious situation, desire for freedom and emancipation from societal constraints that seek to strip them of their independent agency and identity.