The Escape of a Modern Housewife
“She could only realize that she herself – her present self – was in some way different from the other self” (Chopin 67). The Awakening by Kate Chopin is a compelling story of a woman who is awakened from the miserable duties of a housewife and mother to a woman who falls in love and finds herself. This story is not to judge a woman for having an affair with her husband, but it is to make the reader fall in love with this woman named Edna and go with her on her journey of finding herself. Edna is an extraordinary character in The Awakening, and it makes the reader see the basis of independence, and also giving the reader his or her own journey and reflection of their own life throughout the novel. The reader becomes more independent and more eager to say what he or she wants in his or her own life by reading this. Edna’s actions make the reader question their own life and if they truly admire it. “She leaned over and kissed him – a soft, cool, delicate kiss, whose voluptuous sting penetrated his whole being – then she moved away from him” (Chopin 177). Edna didn’t have to kiss Robert, but she wanted to. The Awakening defines the word “want” verses having to be made to.
“A writer of considerable sensibility and talent” said David Malcolm in The Times Literary Supplement (Malcolm). Kate Chopin was born in 1880 in St. Louis, Missouri. What caused her to begin to write was the death of her husband. She has written At Fault, Bayou Folk, and A Night at Acadie. These stories have appeared in Vogue, Youth’s Companion, Atlantic Monthly, Century, Saturday Evening Post, and other various publications. The publication of The Awakening was in 1899. The result of this novel made people very angry, and it wa...
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...ourney. She meets a lot of people while at Grand Isle and falls in love with Robert. He awakens her, and makes her see who she really is, and after she finds herself, she is satisfied. Earlier in the novel, Edna has a fear of drowning, just like she had a fear of being independent and different than other, but she overcame her fears. There are many morals in The Awakening, such as “Don’t fear and excel as much as you can.” Edna was a courageous woman, and the only courageous woman, to make a difference in the sexes of the late 1980’s. She showed woman how to become free, no matter how hard it is.
Work Cited
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: Harper Collins, 1972. Print.
Malcolm, David. “Literary Criticism.” The Times Literary Supplement.com. 2011. Web. 18 Oct. 2011.
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Awakening.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002.
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 fact, Edna seems to drift from setting to setting in the novel, never really finding her true self - until the end of the novel. Chopin seems highly concerned with this question throughout her narrative. On a larger scale, the author seems to be probing even more deeply into the essence of the female experience: Do women in general have a place in the world, and is the life of a woman the cumbersome pursuit to find that very place? The Awakening struggles with this question, raising it to multiple levels of complexity. Edna finds liberation and happiness in various places throughout the novel, yet this is almost immediately countered by unhappiness and misery.
When Edna felt dissatisfied with the life she is given, she pursues other ways in which to live more fully. She attempts painting and enters into an affair with another man. As her desire for freedom grows, she moves out of her husband’s house and tries to live life as she sees fit. She lives a life reflecting her new philosophies towards life, philosophies that are in conflict with that of society. The oppression by man caused Edna to have a social awakening, illuminating the meaning of the novel.
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening takes place in the late 19th century, in Grande Isle off the coast of Louisiana. The author writes about the main character, Edna Pontellier, to express her empowering quality of life. Edna is a working housewife,and yearns for social freedom. On a quest of self discovery, Edna meets Madame Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz, falls in and out of love,and eventually ends up taking her own life. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening shows how the main character Edna Pontellier has been trapped for so many years and has no freedom, yet Edna finally “awakens” after so long to her own power and her ability to be free.
The Awakening sheds light on the desire among many women to be independent. Throughout the novel Edna conducts herself in a way that was disavowed by many and comes to the realization that her gender prevented her from pursuing what she believed would be an enjoyable life. As the story progresses Edna continues to trade her family obligations for her own personal pleasures. This behavior would not have been accepted and many even criticize the novel for even speaking about such activities. Kate Chopin essentially wrote about everything a women couldn’t do. Moreover, it also highlights the point that a man is able to do everything Edna did, but without the same
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.
She doesn't follow the rules. morals that all the women surrounding her succumb to in life. By defying these "laws" Edna makes clear the morals that all the other. women value the satisfaction of their husband, the acceptance of society, and the conformity to the stereotypical roles of a woman. In The Awakening, Edna is used as a tool to emphasize the surrounding.
As Kate Chopin’s The Awakening develops a woman’s journey to defy the present social oppression, this selected passage is Edna’s metamorphosis and the turning point in the novel. After listening to Mademoiselle Reisz’s music at Robert’s departure party, Edna swims for the first time and experiences her awakening to the desire for freedom. The surrounding ocean becomes a place that provides Edna strength to free herself and an isolated hiding where she can express her true essential self. However, Edna’s attempt for liberation eventually resigns to the overwhelming presence of death and the unfortunate realization about the society’s dominance. This passage from page 47-48 is the point of epiphany, establishing Edna’s transformation
In The Awakening, Kate Chopin tells a story during the upbringing of the feminist movement, the movement was masked by the social attitudes entering into the 1900’s. She tells this story in the form of a novel, in which is told in a third person view, that is very sympathetic for Edna Pontellier, the protagonist. This is a review of the journey Edna takes in her awakening and evaluate the effectiveness this novel takes in introducing, continuing, and ending Edna’s awakening.
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.
...tionship she had until she was left with literally no reason to live. Throughout the novella, she breaks social conventions, which damages her reputation and her relationships with her friends, husband, and children. Through Edna’s thoughts and actions, numerous gender issues and expectations are displayed within The Awakening because she serves as a direct representation of feminist ideals, social changes, and a revolution to come.
Critics of Kate Chopin's The Awakening tend to read the novel as the dramatization of a woman's struggle to achieve selfhood--a struggle doomed failure either because the patriarchal conventions of her society restrict freedom, or because the ideal of selfhood that she pursue is a masculine defined one that allows for none of the physical and undeniable claims which maternity makes upon women. Ultimately. in both views, Edna Pontellier ends her life because she cannot have it both ways: given her time, place, and notion of self, she cannot be a mother and have a self. (Simons)
Kate Chopin is best known for her novel, The Awakening, published in 1899. After its publication, The Awakening created such uproar that its author was alienated from certain social circles in St. Louis. The novel also contributed to rejections of Chopin's later stories including, "The Story of An Hour" and "The Storm." The heavy criticism that she endured for the novel hindered her writing. The male dominated world was simply not ready for such an honest exploration of female independence, a frank cataloguing of a woman's desires and her search for fulfillment outside of the institution of marriage.
In it they find a forerunner of Liberation. Though The Awakening has a similar path with Madame Bovary of Flaubert, it doesn’t share a lot with that amazing precursor. Emma Bovary awakens tragically and belatedly indeed, but Edna only goes from one reverie mode to another, until she frowns in the sea, which represents to her mother and the night, the inmost self and death. Edna is more isolated in the end than before. It is a very particular academic fashion that has had Edna transformed into some sort of a feminist heroine. In The Awakening, the protagonist, thus Edna, is a victim because she made herself one. Chopin shows it as having a hothouse atmosphere, but that doesn’t seem to be the only context for Edna, who loves no one in fact- not her husband, children, lovers, or friends- and the awakening of whom is only that of
The sexual aspect of Edna’s awakening is formed through her relationship with a supporting character, Robert LeBrun. In the beginning of the novel, Robert assigns himself to become the helper of Mrs. Pontellier and his advances help to crack the barrier in which Edna is placed in due to her role as a woman of the Victorian era. Her feelings begin to manifest themselves as she intends to liberate herself from her husband and run away with Robert. He on the other hand has no intention of having a sexual affair because of the role placed upon him as a man of the Victorian era which is not to destroy families. Her quest for complete independence ultimately brings her to committing suicide at the end of the story. Her suicide does not represent a disappointment in how she cannot conform to the society around her but a final awakening and symbol for her liberation.