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.