Modern society force humans live meaningless lives with no true concept of happiness. As we read the stories we turn to see Edna pontellier, who married but isn’t happy with her life. In the story we can see that she is in a secure marriage with a man and has kids but isn’t content with her life. We see the same thing happening to Mrs. May, in O’Connor’s “Greenleaf,” is also initially presented living an empty, meaningless, dead life. Life is about binging happy where you are and not being slaved to work, and not notice the good things around that are happening right this every moment.

Awaking opens the reader to see Edna Pontellier who might be seen happily married and living a secure life on the outside but deeply sad in the inside. As we continue reading the story it is quickly revealed, she oppressed by the male dominate society as we can she from her marriage from lance. In the story we can see her caring for him and has no real feelings for him, she’s living to fulfill the duties of a wife and mother. She loves and cares for her children a great deal, but when you compare her to other mother she isn’t as protective or babying their child. Edna has a talent in art, she loves to paint and sketch people. The talent she has isn’t at its full potential as it should be because of her role of being a mother and wife. Edna is criticized by her husband and oppressed by women around her on the island. As a reader I can safely assume that her life is empty and meaning less.

Mrs. May, in O’Connor’s “Greenleaf,” is also initially presented living an empty, meaningless, dead life. She is differentiated from Edna Pontellier, however, in the fact that others do not weigh her down, but by a selfish, closed-minded she has in herself. She allows her farm and property, her uncaring sons, restrictiveness to rule her life and isn’t letting her be happy loving cared, what she could be. In the story a stray bull was let loose on her property and it took her whole time and energy to control the situation. The bull destroyed all the plants that she holds very dear to her heart. She tries to be the ruler of the property and not caring for anyone around her its evident when she orders Mr. Greenleaf to shoot the bull that is owned by her sons not care what her sons might think or say about this. She is hurt in the inside when she sees her sons don’t care about her farm as much as she does. Mrs. Mays see that she had given up on all her ambitions in her life to providing a better life her sons on the farm. She believes that she is showing her kids love trough hard work, but really she wants in the inside is to enslave her sons to the farm just as she is herself. The way in which Mrs. May treats the Greenleaf’s shows a degree of superiority snobbery in her. She does not approve of the way Mr. Greenleaf works, or the way Mrs. Greenleaf prays, or the way the in which they raise their children. She holds her life to be the way