Edna's Escape The Awakening

Her choices to have affairs and disregard her vow of marriage represent her impaired judgment. The change in her attitude and interests becomes quite irresponsible, and that change along with her final decision to commit suicide tell the reader that Edna Pontellier is not capable of making valid judgments. Had Edna Pontellier been of sound mind and body, she would not have ended her young life by suicide. The fact that she can clearly and easily turn to such an alternative suggests that she is depressed and obviously in opposition to the church. The thoughts and actions of Edna Pontellier are solely determined by her manic depressive state, her apparent repressed abuse from her childhood, and her abandonment of Christianity.

Thus, she chooses to use Clarissa Dalloway to represent the life she aspires to have, and chooses that Septimus instead be the misunderstood genius who sacrifices his life. Ironically, both characters represent her inner conflict, and unable to resolve that conflict, she does indeed commit suicide to relieve both herself and her husband. Laura, Clarissa, and Richard each struggle in some way to cope with their mundane existences. Death, both in a literal and metaphorical sense, becomes their method for liberating themselves from such a life. They hope that this death will either bring new life to them or to the people they love most dearly.

Never stable even as a girl, she was shattered by her husband's suicide and the circumstances surrounding it. Later the harrowing deaths at Belle Reve with which she evidently had to cope on her own, also took their toll. By this time she had begun her descent into promiscuity and alcoholism, and in order to blot out the ugliness of her life she created her fantasy world of adoring respectful admirers, of romantic songs and gay parties. She is never entirely successful at this, as the memories of her husband's suicide remain persistently alive in her mind. She retreats into her make-believe world, making her committal to an institution inevitable.

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. Theoretically, Edna’s need to fulfill her personal desires is the cause of her demise. Edna chooses to associate and be enamored with Robert. In doing so, Edna begins to step farther and farther away from her family and sees their needs less clearly.

She denies the event and would prefer not to talk about it with anyone, even her husband. This starts to distance Abigail from her husband, marking the beginning of her alienation, which has resulted from Freud’s defence mechanism of avoidance and denial. This situation proves that “denial can temporarily be useful in helpin... ... middle of paper ... ... and deal with their unhappiness. Over the course of the novel, Abigail grieves several things: the loss of her daughter, the collapse of her family, and the loss of the life she never had the opportunity to live. She turns to Freud’s defence mechanisms as methods of enduring the agony that she faces, which subsequently lead to her alienation.

Madness is subjective, especially so in a time period where women’s emotions and thoughts were brushed off as unimportant. In The Awakening, Kate Chopin explores the inner life of a woman, lost in the patriarchal world and without anyone who truly understands her. Edna Pontellier’s supposed madness plays a large part in her characterization as a woman who has lost her way. However, Edna’s madness is not truly madness; it stems from a neglectful husband, crushing responsibility to society, and a sense of the complete isolation. Edna marries her husband, not out of love, but out of expectation of society and her family’s dislike of him.

In conclusion, The Awakening ended in the only way it could have, with Edna’s death. Edna’s lack of options and her fear of solitude lead to her death. However, Chopin turned her death into something much more meaningful than just a way to end the novel. Edna’s final awakening is realizing that she cannot do the things that wanted to do. With this she chooses death before overcoming her problems.

It makes Mathilda wonder if something is wrong with her. She also believes she is the cause of her mother's and eventually father's death. Mathilda feels unworthy of any sort of relationship later in life. After her father kills himself, she is devastated and feels lost in the world he left her in. Although her father may not have meant to do so, he affected the way Mathilda would forever look at her self and how she fit into society.

Everyone experiences hard times in their lifetime. The outcome will depend on how you face these obstacles. Blanche became shattered when her husband died, but she chose not to accept it, which why it resulted in her only hurting herself. She tried to find another love to cover up her empty heart, but in the end, she deluded him, and hurt herself even more. She tried to act like she was living the perfect life, and that she was better than everyone else, but that cause her a major downfall.

Louise is a woman afflicted by heart problems, which could relate her unhappiness. After losing her husband she starts to feel free; however when her husband walks through the door she dies. Louise was a prisoner of societies making, she was never given a voice. She could never explain her unhappiness because women were expected to love and obey their husband’s without complaints. Marriage to these women meant different things, although the idea of marriage damaged both women.