a side note to the reading response II

In reading through the articles I was struck, rather amusingly, by something that was mentioned in the introduction. When talking about growing up as a feminist Traister mentioned reading Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" which doesn't seem like much to most people but mattered greatly to me.

It's a bizarre and possibly unnecessary point to make but it reminded me of a rather heated debate I got into with my English teacher when we were analyzing "The Awakening". The main argument being made was that the protagonist committed suicide because she was abandoned by the man with whom she had fallen in love. My argument was that it was not the loss of her love but rather the realization that she was living in a world that would not permit her to live as an independent and intellectual being. She could not have an equal intellectual relationship with men as she seemed to want. We never reached an agreement. It is a point of contention that remains to this day.

Debates like these are one of the reasons I love the internet and particularly the blogosphere: they allow for a continuation and expansion of debate to include more voices and allow for more ideas to be introduced. It is through debates like these that policy is honed and improved, causes and activists are kept fresh and sharp, in short they prevent the ideas from devolving into empty rhetoric. That's kind of important. Just a little.