That's a Burden

I wanted to name this post "You Can Tell a Lot about a Woman by the Contents of Her Purse (and Who Carries It), but Sometimes It's More than It Appears to Be," but that's just obnoxiously long. So I went with the current over-used phrase. Because when most people see a man carrying his wife's purse, they make assumptions - she's spoiled and doesn't want to carry it, it's too heavy for her, he secretly enjoys carrying purses... - and they may be right.  Or they could be missing some blatant symbolism (not to mention manners).  You see, when a husband carries his wife's purse, he's helping carry some of her burden.  And what "In the End, We Are All Light" is saying is that carrying someone's burden is a sign of your love; you carry theirs and they forgive you for giving them yours.  And when this happens, the burdens don't seem so bad anymore.
This all ties in well with Their Eyes Were Watching God.  In her first two marriages, Janie's been burdened with the so-called womanly role.  She's been made to run the store and make dinner (without burning it!).  Just don't ask her to carry wood, or she might just leave you.  Even when Joe dies, she still has to run the store (while pretending to mourn).  But then the young, dashing Tea Cake comes along and makes her life so much happier.  He helps her decide to sell the store and move away, taking that burden off her.  And of course, he doesn't make her keep up the required role of a woman - he even lets her take her hair down.  Tea Cake frees Janie from having to live as a dependent woman, when she truly is very independent.  And this all is easy for him: freeing her doesn't put a huge weight on his shoulders.
Of course, their marriage isn't without Janie carrying some of Tea Cake's burdens.  Tea Cake is poor and Janie is rich; thus, Janie supports both of them.  Even when Tea Cake spends all of Janie's money without asking her, she forgives him.  When Tea Cake gets rabies, Janie takes on the burden of killing him to save both him and herself.  And here's the true sign of her love: she still loves Tea Cake and cherishes his memory, but is able to move on with her life, until that last burden is "light as a feather blown."

AP Feminist Bird Watching

Saline High School doesn't have a class specifically focused on feminism.  If you wanted to take one, though, AP Lit would be a good place to start.  In two weeks, we read The Awakening and A Doll's House, and we watched The Hours.  The three of them have a pretty common theme - women leaving their lives as they know it to find out who they really are.  In A Doll's House and The Hours, Nora and Laura abandon their families and start a new life.  In The Awakening and The Hours, Edna and Virginia Woolf take it a step farther; they kill themselves.  And the weird thing?  They both drown.  Edna comes right out and says that she's never felt freer than while she's in the water.  Even though it's never explained, it can probably be assumed that Virginia pretty much feels the same way.
The only woman who doesn't leave her family is Clarissa.  Of course, this because the person who was oppressing her has left her.  Clarissa had spent much of her life taking care of Richard, who was suffering from AIDS.  It's clear that both her partner and her daughter are feeling neglected (especially after Clarissa tells her daughter she's only living when she's with Richard).  Only when he kills himself is she free from him.
As if there weren't enough bird motifs in The Awakening and A Doll's House, there are even more in The Hours.  Virginia Woolf is finally taking a break from writing a book when her sister visits.  On a walk with her niece, she finds a dying bird.  They try to save the bird, but, in great foreshadowing, can't.  The two of them  are both heartbroken, but for different reasons.  Virginia's niece is very young, and the sight of the bird tears her up so much she makes a funeral for it.  But Virginia sees more than just a dying bird - she sees her heroine, and possibly even herself.  While writing this book, living in Richmond, she herself has been withering away.  She knew it, but it didn't really hit her until she saw the bird. She then tells her sister and niece that she had been planning on killing off her heroine, but has changed her mind (very likely due to the bird, in part).  She also convinces her husband that they need to move back to London in order for her to survive.  Alas, even that isn't enough to save Virginia, and she ends up dying as well.

Tales of Birds and Epiphanies

The Awakening and A Doll's House are indeed very similar.  Each has a wife and mother who is learning about herself and breaking away from what society tells her to do and be.  Edna and Nora are practically the same person - I still keep getting them confused.  Both women have husbands who are controlling and concerned with their roles in society.  In the end, the wives successfully get away from their husbands and are free from the life they had.
Of course, there are differences in the books - the most obvious being the way they escape.  Nora has an epiphany and walks out of her house.  Edna, on the other hand, escapes by committing suicide.  Though some people may say that suicide is the cheater's way out, I disagree.  In her eyes, she had no other options.  Her reputation had been ruined, and she had nowhere to go.  Another difference is the relationships Nora and Edna formed while away from their husbands.  Nora began to lean on Dr. Rank, seriously considering getting money from him.  She clearly did not love him; she just wanted his money.  It can be argued, though, that Edna loved Robert.  She had a relationship with him very unlike the one with her husband, and was experiencing a new sense of freedom with it.
Both books dealt with bird symbolism and freedom.  Nora's husband frequently called her his little "skylark," and Edna actually moved into a pigeon house.  Symbolism doesn't get much more obvious than that, folks.  But the meaning of the bird motifs differ: For Nora, she was her husband's skylark, while she was constrained in that marriage.  Edna's moving into the pigeon house was her big step towards freedom.  She had moved out of her husband's house into her own.
Overall, The Awakening and A Doll's House are very easy to compare, and even easier to confuse (especially when you've just watched Gone with the Wind.)  They're great stories about feminism that intertwine amazingly.