Eventual Awakening 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 …show more content…
Previously, she cannot swimming without having others’ protection, “But that night she was like the little tottering, stumbling, clutching child, who of a sudden realizes its powers, and walks for the first time alone, boldly and with over-confidence” (line 6-7). The narrator’s use of progressive climax, “tottering, stumbling, clutching”, creates an imagery of her definite transformation in order to emphasize her developing yearning for freedom. He further compares Edna to a child, which symbolizes purity and hope, to evoke a brighter image that reveals Edna’s amazement about this new awakening. Her enthusiastic motions create a happy atmosphere to convey her feelings to the readers. Edna’s similarity to a child at this moment demonstrates her significant growth into a heroic woman, who is independent and can “walk alone, boldly and with over-confidence”. This part preludes to her later solitude in this …show more content…
“A quick vision of death smote her soul, and for a second of time appalled and enfeebled her senses. But by an effort she rallied her staggering faculties and managed to regain the land” (line 26-27). The rising motif of death is present in the diction: “smote”, “appalled”, and “enfeebled”, foreshadowing Edna’s inevitable, yet dignified death at the end of the novel. Death is a metaphor for the societal forces that condemns Edna’s forbidden desire, and it paralyzes her as if by the work of the devil. The repeating terrors comment on the lethal social oppression with death as the price for liberation. As Edna regains the land again, it symbolizes her temporary submission to the pressure and returns to reality from her fantasy in
In Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, Chopin uses the motif of the ocean to signify the awakening of Edna Pontellier. Chopin compares the life of Edna to the dangers and beauty of a seductive ocean. Edna's fascinations with the unknown wonders of the sea help influence the reader to understand the similarities between Edna's life and her relationship with the ocean. Starting with fear and danger of the water then moving to a huge symbolic victory over it, Chopin uses the ocean as a powerful force in Edna's awakening to the agony and complexity of her life.
The first thematic component, the heavy odor of chloroform, represents the oppressive expectations and limitations society places upon women, particularly Edna. Chopin’s use of the descriptor “heavy” lends the expression an oppressive connotation. Then, chloroform leads to the next stage of childbirth—a stupor of deadened senses—and social oppression leads Edna to believe she was initially “deadened” to her desires. By continuously of fulfilling others’ desires, she originally never even realized she possessed desires of her own. Edna notes this phenomenon following the departure of her husband and children at one point in the novel: “She realized that she had neglected her reading, and determined to start anew upon a course of improving studies, now that her time was completely her own to do with as she liked” (96). Before she was left to her own devices, Edna had allowed herself and her time to be posses...
Throughout The Awakening, water, the main motif, serves as a catalyst to the metamorphosis of Edna. During the length of the story, Edna goes through a process of changes that coincides with the presence of water. Water serves as a conduit for liberation and empowerment that facilitates the rebirth and even death of Edna. In this essay, I will argue that the motif of water represents the continual transformations that occur within Edna throughout the story. The story opens on the Grand Isle off the coast of Louisiana, completely surrounded by water with the Gulf of Mexico to the South.
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.
Throughout Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier, the main protagonist, experiences multiple awakenings—the process in which Edna becomes aware of her life and the constraints place on it—through her struggles with interior emotional issues regarding her true identity: the confines of marriage vs. her yearning for intense passion and true love. As Edna begins to experience these awakenings she becomes enlightened of who she truly and of what she wants. As a result, Edna breaks away from what society deems acceptable and becomes awakened to the flaws of the many rules and expected behavior that are considered norms of the time. One could argue that Kate Chopin’s purpose in writing about Edna’s inner struggles and enlightenment was to
“A feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant import had been given her to control the working of her body and her soul” implies the tremendous joy that encourages her to shout, as well as underscores the significance of the experience in terms of the greater awakening, for the experience actually does provide Edna with the ability to control her own body and soul for the first time. Her “daring and reckless” behavior, her overestimation of strength, and the desire to “swim far out, where no woman had swum before” all suggest the tragic conclusion that awaits Edna. Whether her awakening leads her to want too much, or her desires are not fully compatible with the society in which she lives, she goes too far in her awakening. Amazed at the ease of her new power, she specifically does not join the other groups of people in the water, but rather goes off to swim alone. Indeed, her own awakening ultimately ends up being solitary, particularly in her refusals to join in social expectations. Here, the water presents her with space and solitude, with the “unlimited in which to lose herself.
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.
Looking at the end of the work and going backwards (I read it this way so I could retrace the steps that lead up to Edna’s suicide, I saw this first time an ambiguity between the seeming freedom she got from transcending the bonds of ...
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)
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.
Ranging from caged parrots to the meadow in Kentucky, symbols and settings in The Awakening are prominent and provide a deeper meaning than the text does alone. Throughout The Awakening by Kate Chopin, symbols and setting recur representing Edna’s current progress in her awakening. The reader can interpret these and see a timeline of Edna’s changes and turmoil as she undergoes her changes and awakening.
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.
...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.
to an image of cleansing and rebirth. Edna is starting over and becoming a new person, a
Edna's awakening begins with her vacation to the beach. There, she meets Robert Lebrun and develops an intense infatuation for him, an infatuation similar to those which she had in her youth and gave up when she married. The passionate feelings beginning to overwhelm her are both confusing and exciting. They lead to Edna beginning to ponder what her life is like and what she is like as a person. The spell of the sea influences these feelings which invite "the soul . . . to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation" (Chopin 57). Edna begins to fall under the sea's spell and begins to evaluate her feelings about the life that she has.