hile not fully aware of her discontent, Edna Pontellier begins to question her duties and the expectations of those around her while vacationing with her husband and two children at Grand Isle, a summer haven for the upper class of New Orleans. The handsome wife of a wealthy businessman with two healthy boys, Edna’s marriage appears to be a good one. She married Leone Pontellier, a Catholic and a Creole, in an act of mild rebellion against an overbearing father. Though he is not a vicious or neglectful husband, Edna is not treated as her husband’s equal because she is not seen as such. She finds no pleasure in the things she is expected to find pleasure in, her married life one of routine and obligation. Her husband 's kindness and uniform …show more content…
Edna learning to swim while at Grand Isle is significant. At first, a certain ungovernable dread hung about her when she was in the water, unless there was a hand (presumably a man’s) near by that might reach out and reassure her.19 As she gains confidence, like a “little tottering, stumbling, clutching child, who of a sudden realizes its powers”20 she swims farther out than she has before, though her husband is watching from the beach to reassure her when she admits she thought she might not make it back to land. It isn’t until after she returns to New Orleans that she becomes fully aware of herself and the hopeless situation she is in. She attempts independence, moving out of the family home and into a smaller one in a slightly worse part of town. She tries to nurture her artistic inclinations and beings an affair with a local playboy, but continues to be dissatisfied with life. Adele Ratignolle’s domestic bliss depresses her, and shortly after his return Robert quickly abandons her, supposedly with the best of intentions. Driven back to Grand Isle where her awakening began, “like some new-born creature,”21 Edna swims out to sea with no intention of returning. She admits to herself that one affair would lead to another, and she would eventually forget Robert. …show more content…
She uses The Awakening as an indictment of the restrictions put on women, highlighting the gender issues during her time that were deep seated and hotly debated. Women were property, and as such had no property rights and therefore very few options apart from marriage. Most women were completely dependent on men. They were expected to keep house and raise children, though many were unsuited to the task.29 The “voluntary motherhood” movement advocated for a woman’s right to choose if and when she would have a child30, a choice that was obviously not given to Edna, considering her feelings about motherhood. Chopin created a character that objected so strongly to the obligation of motherhood that she committed suicide, a shocking contradiction to the idea that the “mother-woman”31 was the
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.
Social expectations of women affected Edna and other individuals in Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening. The protagonist, Edna Pontellier, struggles throughout the novel in order to become independent and avoid her roles as mother and housewife in American Victorian society in 1899. This was because women during the 19th century were limited by what society demanded of them, to be the ideal housewives who would take care of their families. However, Edna tries to overcome these obstacles by exploring other options, such as having secret relationships with Robert and Arobin. Although Edna seeks to be independent throughout the novel, in the end she has been awakened but has not achieved independence.
Forms of physical self expression like clothing are utilized by Kate Chopin throughout the text of “The Awakening” to symbolize the driving purpose of Edna Pontellier’s regression. While both the author, Kate Chopin and the critic, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, agree that Edna shows progression and regression throughout the entire story; the reasoning behind the regression is dependent on fate and not personal choosing. Fox-Genovese wrote that Edna Pontellier led from a progression to a regression due to her individualism, however, I believe that Edna’s progression is due to her individualism but the regression is fate destined for her. Edna regresses from a state of individualism to fate catching up with her and the rejection of herself as life
Kate Chopin, author of The Awakening, focused a spotlight on some very dark corners of our society. As a woman, I want to have a voice in my marriage, and I want to make decisions along with my husband, if I decide to marry. In The Awakening, Edna is a married woman who does not want to be a wife or a mother. She is bound to her home and her husband who makes every important decision in their marriage.
She loves to have her “senses stirred,” and her imaginative desires enact these sensations for her when the objects of the desires themselves cannot. Consequently, Edna realizes early in her own life that she is not satisfied with her role as a mother enslaved to humdrum domestic life with a husband to match. However, she does not consciously realize and choose to pursue her own desire for an exciting, passionate, courageous lover until after the novel opens upon one summer vacation at Grand Isle.
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.
Throughout the novel the reader gets a clear sense of Edna Pontellier's peculiar mind and her manic depressive state. She is continually plagued by the moment. Her mood shifts from highs to lows show the reader that a sadness is perpetually within her:
The setting Edna is in directly affects her temperament and awakening: Grand Isle provides her with a sense of freedom; New Orleans, restriction; the “pigeon house”, relief from social constraints. While at Grand Isle, Edna feels more freedom than she does at her conventional home in New Orleans. Instead of “Mrs. Pontellier… remaining in the drawing room the entire afternoon receiving visitors” (Chopin 84), Edna has the freedom to wander and spend time with Robert, rather than being restricted to staying at home while she is at Grand Isle. While sailing across the bay to the Cheniere Caminada, “Edna felt as if she were being borne away from some anchorage which had held her fast, whos chains had been looseining – had snapped the night before” (Chopin 58). The Cheniere Caminada at Grand Isle gives Edna an outlet from the social constraints she is under at home and at the cottage at Grand Isle. As Edna is sailing away she can feel the “anchorage” fall away: the social oppression, the gender roles, and the monotonous life all disappear; the same feeling and sense of awakening she gets when she sleeps for “one hundred years” (Chopin 63). New Orleans brings Edna back into reality – oppression, society, and depression clouds her mind as she is living a life she doesn’t want to live. New Orleans is the bastion of social rules, of realis...
The author included this chapter in the novel to prompt the reader how negligent Edna was in taking off for the Chênière with Robert, not thinking about the emotions of those around. Neglecting her children, she imposes the expecting Madame Ratignolle to undertake accountability for the children and to put them to bed and to also to comfort them when they wonder about their mother. After Edna returns to the home, Madame Ratignolle tells her that her youngest son Etienne has been very disobedient and refused to go to bed. Edna embraces Etienne until he goes to bed, and Ratignolle informs her that Leónce has been concerned about her and had desired to retrieve her from the island. Leónce had been convinced that Edna had just been exhausted and
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.
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.
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)
I believe that the feminist label can only be used for writers who deliberately work within the context of the feminist movement. I never say I'm an "ist" of any kind unless I know how the other person is defining it (Am I against mascara, etc.) but overall: I believe women are complete human beings (radical, I realize) and that laws should mirror this. Nevertheless, men and women are not "equal" if "equal" means "precisely the same." In some of my books, the female central character is a depiction of every woman who is victimized and lessened by gender and
Even though she had left the constraints of the role of wife and mother, society still controls much of her life and what she was able to accomplish. It was not an option to her, to try and return back to the life she had with her husband and children. Suicide was the only option that she had full control over, and she took it. Edna felt as if her children would be better off without her, but sincerely every child requires a mother’s love and attention in their lives. She allowed her need for love to curtail the love her children received from her. Edna was fine without her children,“Their absence was a sort of relief, though she did not admit this, even to herself. It seemed to free her of a responsibility which she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not fitted her.” Her choice to end her life, and not return to her children was just purely thoughtless. Different from the other women at Grand Isle, Edna attempted to find love outside of her marriage. As she fell in love with Robert she began to put a halt to her present life. This is where one would condemn Edna for fighting against the societal and natural structures of motherhood that defined her by the title of wife and