The Awakening
What is an awakening? Throughout the book "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin, the character Edna goes through several awakenings that change her outlook on social norms. The simplest things can cause a person to awake. An awakening is the sudden realization, or insight, of something that was previously unknown. This is usually triggered by an occurrence or experience. Edna goes through independent, true love, gender, social, and sexual awakenings. Each time a person has an awakening you become more and more enlightened to societies faults and in Edna's case oppressions.
The first and most prominent example of Edna's awakening comes from her learning to swim. This awakening starts her gender awakening. At the beginning of the novel Edna is just learning to swim and is afraid whenever she is in water and out of arms reach of safety. In this instance Edna learns that she can do things without the help of man. Metaphorically Edna is tied to the land and the society where she knows what to expect. Several chapters later she learns to swim without assistance, which awakens her to her sense of freedom and independence. “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"(Chopin). Edna realizes that she may be able to do other things since she can swim on her own. This simple act of swimming is not so simple to Edna, it is the start to freeing her from societies grasp. This first awakening is so strong that she ends up dying doing what awoke her in the first place.
After Edna's initial enlightening of independence she becomes awaken that she never really truly loved her husband. Edna come...
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...an cause a person to awake like learning to swim. In this paper Edna's independent, true love, gender, social, and sexual awakenings were covered. In each awakening she learned a new part of who she truly was. When she learned to swim she started her enlightenment, she realized she could do things by herself and be independent. In her true love awakening she learned that she did not really love her husband, Robert showed her that. Through her gender awakening she discovered that you do not have to be either a married house wife or an old woman who is alone. From her social awakening she gained the ability to have friends and explore the walls beyond her own house. Through her sexual awakening she found out that she liked sex which was not supposed to be like as it was a sin.
Work Cited
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: Avion Books, 1972. Print
In “The Awakening,'; the conflicting directions of oppression versus free will illuminate the meanings of social awakening and overcoming tyranny. Awakening from the slumber of patriarchal social convention, Edna must rouse herself from the life of dullness she has always lived.
In The Awakening, the male characters attempt to exert control over the character of Edna. None of the men understand her need for independence. Edna thinks she will find true love with Robert but realizes that he will never understand her needs to be an independent woman. Edna's father and husband control her and they feel she has a specific duty as a woman. Alcee Arobin, also attempts to control Edna in his own way. Edna knows she wants freedom. She realizes this at the beginning of the book. "Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her (Pg. 642). Throughout The Awakening she is trying to gain that independence that she wants so bad.
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
In Chopin's The Awakening, the title itself is symbolic of the awakening that Edna undergoes throughout the course of the story. The story opens with Edna's first visit to Grand Isle, it is here that Edna will begin to awaken to herself. It is implied, and said, throughout the story that Edna is not the motherly type. "In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman." One might wonder then what exactly is Edna awakening to if not to her motherly instincts? According to the story, it is the awakening of "the sleeping places of her soul." In this time, women were expected to lay their sexuality aside as if it were a mere bag of flour. In return, they were given the joys of being a loving wife and mother. However, for a non - motherly woman such as Edna this would prove to be too great a price to pay for financial security.
The first thing I noticed about Kate Chopin’s “The Storm,” is that it is utterly dripping with sexual imagery and symbolism. Our heroine, if you will, seems to be a woman with normally restrained passions and a well-defined sense of propriety, who finds herself in a situation that tears down her restraint and reveals the vixen within. I wonder if it was intentional that the name Calixta makes me think of Calypso – the nymph from Greek mythology. If half of the sexual symbolism I found in this story was intentional, Chopin was a genius. I was quite taken with the sexual imagery of the colors mentioned: white, and red. There is also mention a place called Assumption, while there’s nothing written on it in the bible, I believe it’s the popular opinion of those of Christian faiths, that Mary (Jesus’ mother) going to heaven was called “The Assumption.” Again, I cannot accept that as merely a happy coincidence, I believe its mention in the story was intentional. Finally, we have the storm, so central to the theme of the story that it was named for it. In this work, as well as others by Chopin, there is a recurring theme of infidelity, or women behaving in ways that society generally doesn’t accept, women behaving badly, if you will, I cannot help but wonder if Kate Chopin used her writing to express desires that she would not otherwise have expressed.
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.
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.
A theme in which plays an important part in the novel, The Awakening, is that choices have inevitable consequences. This is connected with Realism because a big belief in Realism is; ethical choices are often the subject, character is more important than action and plot. In multiple cases in this novel, the reader sees the type of choices the characters make and the effects and outcomes that follow after them. Also in some ways, people change their personality and their change in character adds a part in their future. Leonce choice of how he views Edna and he treats her have an effect on him and consequences on and her. Edna is a big part of this novel being the main protagonist and all of her ethical choices that have an enormous consequence on her. Some of these choices are, wanting to be with Robert, to follow the path of Mademoiselle Reisz and becoming an artist, and ultimately deciding to take her life.
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 should be seen as depicting the discontentment that comes from self-gratification rather than the glorification of delighting in one’s fantasies. Chopin describes the central idea of one who is seeking to please her personal needs and desires and, in the process, neglects to notice how her actions affect others. The protagonist, Edna, is not able to find peace or happiness in the accepted daily life that a woman of her era and social status should have. The fulfilling of her desires could essentially cause social ostracism for her, her husband, and her children, yet she is unable to find repose in living the typical social Victorian life. The final resolve of her “awakening” to her desires, her ultimate suicide, is not an honorable position that women should strive toward as a romantic ideal because her desires were hopeless in her situation. Through Edna’s striving for personal satisfaction, she loses the joys that daily life has to offer.
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.
Edna marries her husband, not out of love, but out of expectation of society and her family’s dislike of him. She is a young woman when they marry; she has never had a great romance. The closest thing to passion she
Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour is a brilliant short story of irony and emotion. The story demonstrates conflicts that take us through the character’s emotions as she finds out about the death of her husband. Without the well written series of conflicts and events this story, the reader would not understand the depth of Mrs. Mallard’s inner conflict and the resolution at the end of the story. The conflict allows us to follow the emotions and unfold the irony of the situation in “The Story of an Hour.”