Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1, Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, language: English, abstract: In his essay 'Culture', Steven Greenblatt makes the assertion that culture functions 'as a pervasive technology of control, a set of limits within which social behaviour must be contained' (Greenblatt 225). This controlling function of culture is a central issue in Kate Chopin's novel 'The Awakening'. In the following essay I will prove that cultural boundaries and social conventions play a very important role in 'The Awakening'. By means of two specific examples from the text, I will show that Greenblatt's thesis corresponds to the function of culture at the time in which the novel takes place.