January Blog: Breadwinner or homemaker

Number 5 of The Awakening Socratic Seminar questions talks about Adele Ratignolle whether or not she is an admirable and exemplary human being or that she is something less important.  I think that the purpose of Adele is to represent what every mother, wife, and woman, of the Creole society should model their lives after.  She is the complete opposite of Edna who does not love her husband and rarely thinks about her children.  Unlike Edna, Adele is the type of woman who would sacrifice anything for her children, even herself.  This is the one aspect of Edna, which she says she could never give up even for her children.  For Edna, her own self is the only thing she had complete control over.  I feel that these two different women explain how many different women live their lives today.  Some women wish to be the perfect wife and stay at home mom where many other women wish to go after their own career and life.  Even in today's society many women who choose to put their whole lives into their career and opt not to have a family are considered selfish.  It is almost taboo for the woman to be the breadwinner in our own modern society, even if she is married and has children.  It is still expected for woman to make less money than men and stay at home caring for the children and being the perfect homemaker.  In my family my mom chose to work on her career and wait to have children.  Unlike Edna my mom had that time to find herself and form herself into the person she wanted to be before she raised children.  And unlike my mom's mother who was married and had children at a very young age put her entire life into her children.  Her entire self was her children, while my mom has herself separate from her children.  It does not mean she does not love my sister and I any less, she just has a part of her life that is entirely her.  The same applies to Edna, she does not love her children any less she simply needs that part of herself that only she can access.