Kate Chopin's The Awakening takes place during the late 1800's in New Orleans, Louisiana. The protagonist, Edna Pontellier, fights to obtain independence, which places her in opposition to society. Her society believed that a married woman needed to make both her husband's and children's needs her first priority. Her duty included chores around the house and obeying her husband's demands. Chopin focuses triumph as the theme in The Awakening, as Edna unleashes her true identity in her society.
Edna's triumph began early in the book when she initially realized her desire to rebel against her husband's commands, unlike her habitual obedience to him in prior years. The narrator described Edna's changed behavior when she stated, "She could not at that moment have done other than denied and resisted. She wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that before, and if she had submitted to his command (Chopin 41)." Edna considered her past and found it almost incomprehensible that she dealt with his demands for so long. When she realized her fault, Edna determined to change her behavior, regardless of her society's position.
Edna feared nothing when forced to make major decisions. She attempted to rise above society and the conditions forced upon her to act as the proper housewife who tended to her husband's every command. Edna often visited the ocean because it provided her with the strength and power to stand up to her husband and her society. Edna stated, "How few of us even emerge from such a beginning" (Chopin 17), which clearly demonstrated that she felt vast changes with her emotions and ideas, which allowed her to begin a new life. The sea, which Chopin described during the novel represented Edna's chance to break free and start over; "The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude" (Chopin 152). The ocean water symbolized of cleanliness and re-birth which provided Edna a new sense of freedom, strength and bravery.
Edna's awakening to society and her new self-awareness became her own fantasy. Edna stated, "The years that are gone seem like dreams- if one might go on sleeping and dreaming- but to wake up and find- oh! well! Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life" (Chopin 147).
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.
In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier’s suicide is an assertion of her independence and contributes to Chopin’s message that to be independent one must choose between personal desires and societal expectations. Chopin conveys this message through Edna’s reasons for committing suicide and how doing so leads her to total independence. Unlike the other women of Victorian society, Edna is unwilling to suppress her personal identity and desires for the benefit of her family. She begins “to realize her position in the universe as a human being and to recognize her relationship as an individual to the world within and about her” (35).
Essentially, Edna is not able to fulfill any of the roles that are presented by Chopin in the novel: mother, sister, daughter, wife, friend, artist, lover to either man, and finally the traditional role of a woman in society. She does not quite fit into any niche, and thus her suicide at the end of the novel is the only way for Edna’s story to end. Chopin must have Edna die, as she cannot survive in this restrained society in which she does not belong to. The idea of giving yourself completely to serve another, Edna declares “that she would never sacrifice herself for her children, or for any one” (47). However, her awakening is also a realization of her underprivileged position in a male dominated society. The first sign that Edna is becoming comfortable with herself, and beginning to loosen the constrictions of not being an individual is when she asks Robert, her husband, to retrieve her shawl: "When he returned with the shawl she took it and kept it in her hand. She did not put it around her" (30). Edna is trying to establish herself as an artist in a society where there is no tradition of women as creative beings. For any woman to suggest a desire for a role outside the domestic sphere, as more than a mother or housewife, was perceived as
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.
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
Individual will is a force that is significant, and yet can be manipulated by a more powerful source. In the Victorian Age setting within The Awakening by Kate Chopin, men have been manipulated by society. They are forced to reflect their norms on women. These norms have been caused repressive and manipulative behavior within men. Edna Pontellier, protagonist of the novel, confronts several men who confront her yearning for individualism. Each male plays a role ordained by society and as a result they develop characteristics that promote specific, yet conflicting images to the reader.
Franklin continues the argument that Edna is an example of the “labor toward self of the female hero with the accompanying inner and outer threats to attainment of selfhood” (Franklin 510) in her criticism The Awakening and the Failure of Psyche. Franklin also compares Edna’s character to a mythological figure; the comparison proves how it is “clear that heroism is necessary for the nascent self to resist the lure and power of unconscious” (Franklin 510). To first address Franklin’s discussion of Edna’s fight to become a female hero, it’s displayed in the criticism that Edna’s individuality is one of a matriarchal society. However, as Franklin proves, Edna wants are different than her actions because she “begins to play with different love roles, such as courtly love” (Franklin 514). Edna is then said to be a sexually awakened being because of her dabbling in different love roles as well as her idealism in her new relationships; although, her new sexual being comes with a cost because she, as said by Franklin, falls into the “narrow roles prescribed by the patriarchs” (Franklin 520). This struggle, as identified by Franklin, adds to the darkness in her emerging ego out of the stifling atmosphere. The criticism then elaborates on how the stifling atmosphere brings Edna to believe that there is a whimsical love in her journey individuation, but instead “Chopin now wishes [the readers] to see that Edna has a crucial choice to make: either to accept the fantastic nature of romantic love and continue on her solitary journey to self, or to refuse to acknowledge romantic love’s transient nature and embrace death” (Franklin 524). Franklin identifies Edna’s labor to find a balance between love and individuality as one similar to both the spirits of Psyche and Eros; they each have a continually struggle to strive towards two different passionate loves. Franklin explains that much like Psyche’s yearning, Edna’s infatuation with Robert is one in which
When Edna looked back toward the shore, she notices the people she left there. She also notices that she has not covered a great distance. Then a "quick vision of death smote her soul" (Chopin 74), a sense of death that reaffirms her selfhood and reminds her of her clinging to Robert. Her meditation is broken by the wavering of her mind to other objects and senses. Her struggle to regain the shore becomes a kind of near-death experience, at the end of which comes an utter physical exhaustion, a stretching of her self's physical boundary. Edna's intellectual self, the mind, another creation of ignorance, awakens as well. She begins to "feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul" (Chopin 78).
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
Edna’s failed relationship with her husband Leonce highlights her tendency towards isolation and her breaking away from the security Leonce provides. During their vacation on Grand Isle, the couple has various disputes and Edna, in turn, begins to defy the wishes of her husband. She proclaims,“I mean to stay out here. I don’t wish to go in, and I don’t intend to. Don’t speak to me like that again; I shall not answer you”(Chopin 47). Edna’s deficiency of her husband’s intentions reflects her new perspective on life as well as growing theme that Edna prefers her isolation. Edna’s repetitive use of “I” reflects her intention to distinguish herself as individual apart from her marriage.The beneficiary
During the late nineteenth century, the time of protagonist Edna Pontellier, a woman's place in society was confined to worshipping her children and submitting to her husband. Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, encompasses the frustrations and the triumphs in a woman's life as she attempts to cope with these strict cultural demands. Defying the stereotype of a "mother-woman," Edna battles the pressures of 1899 that command her to be a subdued and devoted housewife. Although Edna's ultimate suicide is a waste of her struggles against an oppressive society, The Awakening supports and encourages feminism as a way for women to obtain sexual freedom, financial independence, and individual identity.
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 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.
In America, the 1890s were a decade of tension and social change. A central theme in Kate Chopin’s fiction was the independence of women. In Louisiana, most women were their husband’s property. The codes of Napoleon were still governing the matrimonial contract. Since Louisiana was a Catholic state, divorce was rare and scandalous. In any case, Edna Pontellier of Chopin had no legal rights for divorce, even though Léonce undoubtedly did. When Chopin gave life to a hero that tested freedom’s limits, she touched a nerve of the politic body. However, not Edna’s love, nor her artistic inner world, sex, or friendship can reconcile her personal growth, her creativity, her own sense of self and her expectations. It is a very particular academic fashion that has had Edna transformed into some sort of a feminist heroine. If she could have seen that her awakening in fact was a passion for Edna herself, then perhaps her suicide would have been avoided. Everyone was forced to observe, including the cynics that only because a young