Imagine being in a long and deep sleep. You’ve been snoozing for a while now. You’re dreaming of all your favourite things. Suddenly, bang! Your slumber is disturbed and you can’t manage to return to your wonderful dream. Well, we know of a character who experiences this; Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin’s novella, The Awakening (1899). Edna develops a fantasy life that is beyond her reality and eventually realises it is unattainable due to Creole paradigms of womanhood. She attempts to defy these expectations but deduces that she can’t through the conflicting perspectives of those around her. Some support her but some confine her and it is her final reflection of this conflict that determines her tragic actions. This notion of individuals …show more content…
In The Awakening, Edna possesses a different view of womanhood compared to others. She is not the ‘mother woman,’ and Mademoiselle Reisz subtlety supports this whilst Leonce disapproves. Mademoiselle Reisz encourages Edna to develop her own identity and to understand the pleasure gained from individual creation. Reisz is an independent and eccentric woman who Chopin utilises to depict the ‘New Woman’ concept. Academic Maria Viorica from Iasi University, claims ‘This new type of female character replaced the previous angelic female protagonist…Chopin used themes of New Woman fiction…(and) the female desire for a separate identity.’ I believe that Mademoiselle Reisz contributed to Edna’s desire, and awoke her to dream of autonomy. When Edna originally listened to her music, ‘the personified ‘passions (were) arouse(d) within her soul, swaying…lashing.’ Mademoiselle’s music sparks Edna’s desire for independence and the metaphorical meaning of the ‘bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition must have strong wings,’ advises Edna to shed the obedient and docile qualities. However this perspective of independence and identity juxtaposes with Leonce’s view, as he believes a woman’s role is to serve her mother and spousal duties. When Edna engages in painting and exhibits that she has the ability to be free, Leonce is outraged, ‘Then in God’s name paint! But don’t let the family go to the …show more content…
Both Edna in The Awakening and the persona in ‘Personal Helicon’ struggle with social paradigms and expectations. Edna is forced to make a final decision and by re-evaluating her self-discovery, she recognises that her new ideals of freedom and autonomy do not align with her world, resulting in her suicide. She concludes that she could change herself but that, ‘He (Robert) did not know; he did not understand,’ repeating Robert’s unwillingness to defy convention like her. Edna is awoken from her dream. She realises she cannot return to her reality. Her dream is unattainable. Despite the metaphorical fluttering and disabled bird that could not rise above traditional plain, I believe she did achieve independence. Although her dream was unattainable and she was living a dual life, she made the conscience decision to not live in an oppressive society. She dictated her own fate, realising that future pain and suffering is not worth it, thus returning to the ocean that first awoke her. Similarly, the persona in ‘Personal Helicon’ struggles with societal expectations. However his is focused on adulthood, not Victorian ideals of womanhood like Edna. The persona believes they can live a naïve, youthful dream, however through his reflection of childhood and his required role as an adult, he concludes he must shift his aspirations as he says, ‘beneath all adult dignity. I
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.
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
Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” is wrought with symbolism, foreshadowing and careful diction choices. Many of the passages throughout the novel embody Edna’s awakening sense of self-reliance, independence and sexuality. These are sy...
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.
In Chopin's Awakening, the reader meets Edna Pontellier, a married woman who attempts to overcome her "fate", to avoid the stereotypical role of a woman in her era, and in doing so she reveals the surrounding. society's assumptions and moral values about women of Edna's time. Edna helps to reveal the assumptions of her society. The people surrounding her each day, particularly women, assume their roles as "housewives"; while the men are free to leave the house, go out at night, gamble, drink and work. Edna surprises her associates when she takes up painting, which represents a working job and independence for Edna.
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.
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.
Edna’s Fall from Grace in The Awakening. 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.
In The Awakening, Chopin sets up two characters main characters and a subsidiary female character to serve as foils to Edna. The main characters are Adele Ratignolle, "the bygone heroine of romance" (888), and Mademoiselle Reisz, the musician who devoted her life to music, rather than a man. Edna falls somewhere in between the two, but distinctly recoils with disgust from the type of life her friend Adele leads: "In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman." Adele Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz, the two important female principle characters, provide the two different identities Edna associates with. Adele serves as the perfect "mother-woman" in The Awakening, being both married and pregnant, but Edna does not follow Adele's footsteps. For Edna, Adele appears unable to perceive herself as an individual human being. She possesses no sense of herself beyond her role as wife and mother, and therefore Adele exists only in relation to her family, not in relation to herself or the world. Edna desires individuality, and the identity of a mother-woman does not provide that. In contrast to Adele Ratignolle, Mademoiselle Reisz offers Edna an alternative to the role of being yet another mother-woman. Mademoiselle Reisz has in abundance the autonomy that Adele completely lacks. However, Reisz's life lacks love, while Adele abounds in it. Mademoiselle Reisz's loneliness makes clear that an adequate life cannot build altogether upon autonomy. Although she has a secure sense of her own individuality and autonomy, her life lacks love, friendship, or warmth. Later in the novel we are introduced to another character, her name is Mariequita. Mariequita is described as an exotic black-eyed Spanish girl, whom Edna looks upon with affectionate curiosity. Unlike the finely polished heroine, Mariequita walks on "broad and coarse" bare feet, which she does not "strive to hide". This strikes Edna with a refreshing sense of admiration. To her, the girl's soiled feet symbolize naked freedom, unconstrained by the apparel of civilization. Thus, Edna finds her rather beautiful. Mariequita is more like an unrefined version of Edna, that is, her instinctual self. At times, Mariequita ventures to express the thoughts that are secretly buried in Edna's unconscious.
Could the actions of Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin's novella The Awakening ever be justified? This question could be argued from two different perspectives. The social view of The Awakening would accuse Edna Pontellier of being selfish and unjustified in her actions. Yet, in terms of the story's romanticism, Edna was in many ways an admirable character. She liberated herself from her restraints and achieved nearly all that she desired. Chopin could have written this novel to glorify a woman in revolt against conventions of the period. Yet, since the social standpoint is more factual and straightforward, it is the basis of this paper. Therefore, no, her affairs, treatment of her family and lovers, and suicide were completely unwarranted. She was not denied love or support by any of those close to her. Ultimately Edna Pontellier was simply selfish.
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.
In The Awakening, Kate Chopin depicts the varying definitions of women and their role through her three major female characters, Edna Pontellier, Madamoiselle Reisz and Madame Ratignolle. In the late 1800s, the role of women was strictly being caretakers for both their children and husbands. Edna Pontellier attempts to fit into society’s expectations by marrying Léonce Pontellier and raising two children, yet she struggles with feelings of oppression as she suffers through her unwanted role. Mademoiselle Reisz, a talented musician, is unmarried and childless, rejecting all of society’s ideals. Edna’s friend, Madame Ratignolle, greatly contrasts the two as she represents the model Louisiana women. However, while Edna, Madamoiselle Reisz and Madame Ratignolle each depict a different idea of woman’s role in society, none of these three women reach their full individual potential.
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.
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)