A representation of a figure or role model, is an individual who’s monotonous turns witty to be perceived as someone heroic. The act of straying away from incompetence and impotence to build a core character that gathers up acquisition to be better than who they once were. Inadequately however, individuals are threatened by this dastardly trend of breeding a weak figure towards appealing to the lowest common denominator. Perpetrated by pitiful characterization and an infection that spreads rapidly, destroying everything it touches. With Edna Pontellier one of its casualties from the book The Awakening by Kate Chopin. The prominent character Edna is portrayed in this story as women in her time (1898) and now as a pathetic figure that draws a …show more content…
To be that of someone who breaks out of a weak shell only to construct a new. But the judgement of a weak character only binds a pathetic self-absorbent figure. Edna Pontellier is a woman that didn’t fabricate a new role for herself being. A woman that was trapped from sloth and incompetence, shone by her destiny to not be contested in the broken-down society she took part in. Edna tried to be stronger and different. That is what a prominent character should be portrayed as. But does prominent mean that you aren’t weak, that you are able to stray away from a become a monument to our collective sins. Edna did not meet her awakening, Edna met her demise. This lead to characterizing of an individual of someone who is …show more content…
It allows them to barricade themselves from a weak distraught mind, to be able to overcome the complexity of being the mother’s society doesn’t make them out to be, a sense of being heroic. However, is the same said for Edna Pontellier in the book The Awakening? Does she follow the guideline of what deems a mother to be or does she create her own? Edna prominently ignores the role of motherhood to find herself by leaving her own children behind. An act of greed and selfishness or self-individuality? “I would give up the unessential: I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself” (page 47). To be able to surrender yourself, your hope, your hope that one is able to perceive themselves for better or worse. From critical thought and the emergent of the mind, to suppress your own individuality is an action people stray away from. To exploit the form of human intellect and a human’s worst trait. It is the monument to our collective sins. But what this quote exacerbates is the quality of how Edna is portrayed as pathetic figure. How she is not able to give herself up for what people say give life to them. Their children. A form selfishness act to preserve that Edna is incompetent for not being able to give up what she is and who she wants to be. Society wants to deem her into something she’s not. Society
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
The passage of The Awakening which truly marks Edna Pontellier’s new manner of thought regarding her life revolves around her remembrance of a day of her childhood in Kentucky. She describes the scene to Madame Ratigonelle as the two women sit on the beach one summer day. The passage opens with a description of the sea and the sky on that particular day. This day and its components are expressed in lethargic terms such as “idly” and “motionless” and suggested a scene of calm sleep. Such a depiction establishes an image of serenity and tranquility, in other words the calm before the storm which derives from Edna’s “awakening.”
Edna Pontellier in the Awakening represents a woman who stands out from her comfort zone and awakes to realize she is not happy with what everybody else believed was correct or acceptable for society . In this journey of discovering her individualism and independency two important persons helped her to shape this new concept about life; Adele Ratignolle and mademoiselle Reisz. The close relationship that Edna formed with these two women is the key to her awakening. The nineteen century’s women considered friendship as a very important aspect of their lives. The Smith-Rosenberg describe in her article how important was the bond that women created between them and how intimated they were. We can say that Edna and her friends shared
Leonce Pontellier, the husband of Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, becomes very perturbed when his wife, in the period of a few months, suddenly drops all of her responsibilities. After she admits that she has "let things go," he angrily asks, "on account of what?" Edna is unable to provide a definite answer, and says, "Oh! I don't know. Let me along; you bother me" (108). The uncertainty she expresses springs out of the ambiguous nature of the transformation she has undergone. It is easy to read Edna's transformation in strictly negative terms‹as a move away from the repressive expectations of her husband and society‹or in strictly positive terms‹as a move toward the love and sensuality she finds at the summer beach resort of Grand Isle. While both of these moves exist in Edna's story, to focus on one aspect closes the reader off to the ambiguity that seems at the very center of Edna's awakening. Edna cannot define the nature of her awakening to her husband because it is not a single edged discovery; she comes to understand both what is not in her current situation and what is another situation. Furthermore, the sensuality that she has been awakened to is itself not merely the male or female sexuality she has been accustomed to before, but rather the sensuality that comes in the fusion of male and female. The most prominent symbol of the book‹the ocean that she finally gives herself up to‹embodies not one aspect of her awakening, but rather the multitude of contradictory meanings that she discovers. Only once the ambiguity of this central symbol is understood can we read the ending of the novel as a culmination and extension of the themes in the novel, and the novel regains a...
In Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening, Edna Pontellier is forced to strive to fit in with everyone and everything around her. Born and raised in Kentucky, Edna is used to the Southern society, but when she marries Leonce Pontellier, a Catholic and a Creole, and moves to Louisiana with him, her surroundings change a great deal. This makes her feel extremely uncomfortable and confused; she feels as though she has lost her identity along with a great deal of her happiness. In order to regain this identity and to try to find out who she truly is, Edna tries her hardest to conform to the Creole society. Though Edna tries extremely hard to accept this Creole society as her own and to become part of it in order to claim her identity, she fails to find both her true happiness and her identity, which, in turn, causes her to commit suicide.
As evidenced in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and other novels of the 1800’s, women writers of this period seem to feel very repressed. Leonce Pontellier seemed to be fond of his wife, and treated her as one would treat a loved pet. In the beginning of the story it describes him as looking at her as a “valuable piece of personal property”. He does not value her fully as a human being more as a piece of property. However, he expects her to be everything he thinks she should be. Her children also expect total sacrifice from her. She obviously feels unfulfilled in life and inadequate in many facets. She does not feel like an artist, she does not feel like a satisfied wife or mother.
In Kate Chopin’s, The Awakening, the reader immediately notices the sexual undertones of Mrs. Mallard and Robert’s relationship and the strained relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Mallard. There are always going to be women who do not want the routine “married with children” lifestyle, unfortunately in Edna’s time period that was the primary role of women. Had she been living in today perhaps she would have been without a husband and children, possibly totally devoted to a career in the arts and totally single. Back to her reality though: I believe she is unsure if she wants that one true love (supposedly Robert) or if she just wants anyone who will pay her a little attention and is fun (supposedly Alcee Arobin). Edna wants to be Wild and Free, not saying that there is anything wrong with that, but she needs to recognize it for what it is because she is really fooling herself.
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.
The time Edna spends in water is a suspension of space and time; this is her first attempt at realizing Robert's impermanence. In a strange way, Edna is taking her self as an object of meditation, where at the extremity of self absorption, she should be able to see through her own selflessness. "As she swam she seemed to be reaching for the unlimited in which to lose herself[emphasis added]" (Chopin 74). Edna has left her earthly existence on the shore and looked forward to a new existence, with the "unlimited", or nirvana as a tantalizing prize on the other shore. Her mistake lies in looking back.
As the novel The Awakening opens, the reader sees Edna Pontellier as one who might seem to be a happy married woman living a secure, fulfilled life. It is quickly revealed, though, that she is deeply oppressed by a male dominated society, evident through her marriage to Leonce. Edna lives a controlled life in which there is no outlet for her to develop herself as the individual who she is. Her marriage to Leonce was more an act of rebellion from her parents than an act of love for Leonce. She cares for him and is fond of him, but had no real love for him. Edna’s inability to awaken the person inside her is also shown through her role as a “mother-woman”. She loves and cares for her children a great deal, but does not fit into the Creole mother-society in which other women baby and over protect their children.
Additionally, Edna’s sacrifice helped her established an identity for herself. “I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself, I can’t make it more clear; it’s only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me” (Chopin 57). She realizes how much she valued herself and how she would handle herself. As well as, this emphasizes on the meaning of The Awakening, of how women are able to define themselves as something more than a
In the novel The Awakening, Kate Chopin tells of Edna Pontellier's struggle with fate. Edna Pontellier awakens from a slumber only to find that her life is displeasing, but these displeasing thoughts are not new to Edna. The actions taken by Edna Pontellier in the novel The Awakening clearly determine that she is not stable. The neglect of her duties as a wife and mother and as a woman of society are all affected by her mental state. Her choices to have affairs and disregard her vow of marriage represent her impaired judgment. The change in her attitude and interests becomes quite irresponsible, and that change along with her final decision to commit suicide tell the reader that Edna Pontellier is not capable of making valid judgments. Had Edna Pontellier been of sound mind and body, she would not have ended her young life by suicide. The fact that she can clearly and easily turn to such an alternative suggests that she is depressed and obviously in opposition to the church. The thoughts and actions of Edna Pontellier are solely determined by her manic depressive state, her apparent repressed abuse from her childhood, and her abandonment of Christianity.
As the novel starts out Edna is a housewife to her husband, Mr. Pontellier, and is not necessarily unhappy or depressed but knows something is missing. Her husband does not treat her well. "...looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage." She is nothing but a piece of property to him; he has no true feelings for her and wants her for the sole purpose of withholding his reputation. "He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother's place to look after children, whose on earth was it?" Mr. Pontellier constantly brings her down for his own satisfaction not caring at all how if affects Edna.
In The Awakening by Kate Chopin, the setting is in the late 1800s on Grand Isle in Louisiana. The main character of the story is Edna Pontellier who is not a Creole. Other important characters are Adele Ratignolle, Mr. Ratgnolle, Robert Lebrun, and Leonce Pontellier who are all Creole's. In the Creole society the men are dominant. Seldom do the Creole's accept outsiders to their social circle, and women are expected to provide well-kept homes and have many children. Edna and Adele are friends who are very different because of their the way they were brought up and they way they treat their husbands. Adele is a loyal wife who always obeys her husband's commands. Edna is a woman who strays from her husband and does not obey her husband's commands. Kate Chopin uses Adele to emphasize the differences between her and Edna.
In the novella The Awakening by Kate Chopin, the main character Edna Pontellier “becomes profoundly alienated from traditional roles required by family, country, church, or other social institutions and is unable to reconcile the desire for connection with others with the need for self-expression” (Bogard). The novella takes place in the South during the 1800’s when societal views and appearances meant everything. There were numerous rules and expectations that must be upheld by both men and women, and for independent, stubborn, and curious women such as Edna, this made life challenging. Edna expressed thoughts and goals far beyond her time that made her question her role in life and struggle to identify herself, which caused her to break societal conventions, damage her relationships, and ultimately lose everything.