In Kate Chopin’s novella, The Awakening, Edna Pontellier’s behaviors appear to be symptoms of depression rather than the actions of a strong woman in search of liberation. This conclusion, however, is not entirely apparent until the end of the novel. Throughout the story, Edna does things to lead the reader to believe she is being strong and overcoming the burdens of living in a patriarchal society. However, a strong woman who is truly overcoming adversity is not going to commit suicide.
Reading carefully, one realizes that Chopin’s true model of feminism lies in Mademoiselle Reisz, who is happy to live alone and unmarried despite what society dictates a woman’s role to be. Mademoiselle Reisz is an accomplished pianist to whom Edna turns for advice as she struggles to find her sense of self. Unlike Mademoiselle Reisz, however, Edna lacks the motivation and willpower necessary to follow her desires from thought to fruition.
Throughout The Awakening, the reader follows Edna Pontellier as she becomes increasingly restless and discontented with her life. In Depression and Chopin’s The Awakening, Steven T. Ryan explains the parallels of Edna’s actions and inactions with depression. He writes:
Edna’s final despair derives from a paradoxical fear of entrapment…and a fear that she will be left alone, without authentic intimacy. This reaction to engulfment-estrangement is frequently interpreted as Edna’s heroic struggle against social roles and expectations, but the terror of engulfment-estrangement is a common effect of depression, one often understood as resulting from the depressive’s early frustration of dependency and intimacy needs (Ryan).
Ryan continues his assertion that Edna suffers from depression with th...
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...hopelessness consumed her.
To a certain extent, the reader can attempt believe that Edna finally found her liberation in death. However, a truly liberated woman is going to face the challenges that await her with strength and courage, and will find freedom in her own accomplishments.
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. 2nd. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994. Print.
Grohol Psy. D., John M. "Types and Symptoms of Depression." PsychCentral. N.p., 2006. Web. 25 July 2011.
Lickerman MD, Alex. "The Six Reasons People Attempt Suicide." Blog. Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, 29 Apr. 2010. Web. 25 July 2011.
Ramos, Peter. "Unbearable Realism: Freedom, Ethics and Identity in The Awakening." College Literature 37.4 (2010): 145-165. Print.
Ryan, Steven T. "Depression and Chopin's The Awakening." Mississippi Quarterly (1998): Web. 25 July 2011.
Throughout Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening, the main protagonist Edna Pontellier, ventures through a journey of self-discovery and reinvention. Mrs.Pontellier is a mother and wife who begins to crave more from life, than her assigned societal roles. She encounters two opposite versions of herself, that leads her to question who she is and who she aims to be. Mrs. Pontellier’s journey depicts the struggle of overcoming the scrutiny women face, when denying the ideals set for them to abide. Most importantly the end of the novel depicts Mrs.Pontellier as committing suicide, as a result of her ongoing internal
In Kate Chopin's, The Awakening, Edna Pontellier came in contact with many different people during a summer at Grand Isle. Some had little influence on her life while others had everything to do with the way she lived the rest of her life. The influences and actions of Robert Lebrun on Edna led to her realization that she could never get what she wanted, which in turn caused her to take her own life.
...e Awakening." 1899. The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. Ed. Per Seyersted. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1969. 881-1000.
Edna’s recognition of herself as an individual as opposed to a submissive housewife is controversial because it’s unorthodox. When she commits suicide, it’s because she cannot satisfy her desire to be an individual while society scorns her for not following the traditional expectations of women. Edna commits suicide because she has no other option. She wouldn’t be fulfilled by continuing to be a wife and a mother and returning to the lifestyle that she led before her self-discovery.
Chopin, Kate. "The Awakening." The Norton Anthology of American Literature.. Gen. ed. Nina Baym. 8th ed. Vol. C. New York: Norton, 2012. 561-652. Print.
The Awakening is a novel about the growth of a woman becoming her own person; in spite of the expectations society has for her. The book follows Edna Pontellier as she struggles to find her identity. Edna knows that she cannot be happy filling the role that society has created for her. She did not believe that she could break from this pattern because of the pressures of society. As a result she ends up taking her own life. However, readers should not sympathize with her for taking her own life.
Forms of physical self expression like clothing are utilized by Kate Chopin throughout the text of “The Awakening” to symbolize the driving purpose of Edna Pontellier’s regression. While both the author, Kate Chopin and the critic, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, agree that Edna shows progression and regression throughout the entire story; the reasoning behind the regression is dependent on fate and not personal choosing. Fox-Genovese wrote that Edna Pontellier led from a progression to a regression due to her individualism, however, I believe that Edna’s progression is due to her individualism but the regression is fate destined for her. Edna regresses from a state of individualism to fate catching up with her and the rejection of herself as life
She desperately wanted a voice and independence. Edna’s realization of her situation occurred progressively. It was a journey in which she slowly discovered what she was lacking emotionally. Edna’s first major disappointment in the novel was after her husband, Leonce Pontellier, lashed out at her and criticized her as a mother after she insisted her child was not sick. This sparked a realization in Edna that made here realize she was unhappy with her marriage. This was a triggering event in her self discovery. This event sparked a change in her behavior. She began disobeying her husband and she began interacting inappropriately with for a married woman. Edna increasingly flirted with Robert LeBrun and almost instantly became attracted to him. These feelings only grew with each interaction. Moreover, when it was revealed to Edna that Robert would be leaving for Mexico she was deeply hurt not only because he didn’t tell her, but she was also losing his company. Although Edna’s and Robert’s relationship may have only appeared as friendship to others, they both secretly desired a romantic relationship. Edna was not sure why she was feeling the way she was “She could only realize that she herself-her present self-was in some way different from the other self. That she was seeing with different eyes and making the acquaintance of new conditions in herself that colored
When Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" was published at the end of the 19th Century, many reviewers took issue with what they perceived to be the author's defiance of Victorian proprieties, but it is this very defiance with which has been responsible for the revival in the interest of the novel today. This factor is borne out by Chopin's own words throughout her Preface -- where she indicates that women were not recipients of equal treatment. (Chopin, Preface ) Edna takes her own life at the book's end, not because of remorse over having committed adultery but because she can no longer struggle against the social conventions which deny her fulfillment as a person and as a woman. Like Kate Chopin herself, Edna is an artist and a woman of sensitivity who believes that her identity as a woman involves more than being a wife and mother. It is this very type of independent thinking which was viewed as heretical in a society which sought to deny women any meaningful participation.
As time goes on we can see that her depression grows ever so slightly, and that it will continue to grow throughout the novel. Such happenings are nothing new to Edna: " Such experiences as the foregoing were not uncommon in her married life. They seemed never before to have weighed much against her husband's kindness and a uniform devotion which had come to be tacit and self understood." (8) The author goes on to describe what Edna felt during the episode: " An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul's summer day." (8)
Kate Chopin's novella The Awakening tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a woman who throughout the novella tries to find herself. Edna begins the story in the role of the typical mother-woman distinctive of Creole society but as the novelette furthers so does the distance she puts between herself and society. Edna's search for independence and a way to stray from society's rules and ways of life is depicted through symbolism with birds, clothing, and Edna's process of learning to swim.
We are told there are days when she "was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with sunlight.." On such days Edna "found it good to be alone and unmolested." Yet on other days, she is molested by despondencies so severe that "...
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. A Norton Critical Edition: Kate Chopin: The Awakening. Ed. Margo Culley. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994. 3-109.
Kate Chopin's The Awakening tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother living in the upper crust of New Orleans in the 1890s. It depicts her journey as her standing shifts from one of entrapment to one of empowerment. As the story begins, Edna is blessed with wealth and the pleasure of an affluent lifestyle. She is a woman of leisure, excepting only in social obligations. This endowment, however, is hindered greatly by her gender.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 535-625. Print.