Sometimes people need to find their true selves and when we do that we find our true happiness and sometimes you gain things you never had or thought you needed. In the book, Edna begins the process of identifying her true self, the self that exists apart from the identity she maintains as a wife and mother, Robert unknowingly encourages her by indulging her emerging sensuality (Houghton). Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening to show people of the nineteenth century society and the upcoming generations, how hard women had to struggle to overcome their differing emotions and the coercion of society’s tradition to become more than just personal property for men to control. Stated by Mademoiselle Reiz: “the bird that would ... ... middle of paper ... ...y, Peter. Beginning Theory.
The Course of Ideas. Second Edition. Jeanne Gunner and Ed Frankel,Washington: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991. 433-438.
Orlando, FL. 2007 print Harlan, Judith A. V. and Kathleen McCoy “Anglo-Saxon Society”. English Literature to 1785. HarperCollins Publishers, 1992. 5.
Print Carter, Angela. “The Lady of the House of Love.” The Bloody Chamber. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. 93-108. Print
Eliot, George, Middlemarch, Great Britain: Penguin, 1994. Graner, Suzanne, "Organic Fictions," in in Middlemarch: New Casebooks, Ed. John Peck. Miller, J. Hillis, "Narrative and History," in ELH (English Literary History), vol. 41 (1974).
Pride and Prejudice. By Jane Austen. Ed. Donald Gray. New York: Norton and Co., 1993. pp.
"Jane Eyre and the History of Self-Respect." "Modern Language Quarterly." Dec 1991. 423-53 Sienkewicz, Anne W. "Jane Eyre An Autobiography." Masterplots II.
An Inappropriate Feminist Re-reading of Henry James's Washington Square The article "Re-producing James" is a defense of the feminist perspective in regards to Henry James's Washington Square. The article discusses the point of truth in words. Stating only (in a roundabout way) that the readers interpretation and perspective of reading the novel determines their understanding of the truth. The author Barbara Rasmussen, states that another critic, Ian Bell's perspective of Henry James's writing " 'exploits the ideological equipment of that which it opposes': patriarchal capitalism" (63). However, her only point seems to be that in Ian Bell's criticism as well as in Washington Square, the writing is completely phallic, capitalistic, and patriarchal.
Wolff’s essay, despite its faults, “combines perspectives” to provide a fuller representation, understanding, and appreciation of Chopin’s character and her story. Wolff begins by providing The Awakening’s historical background and the cultural obstructions hindering Edna’s sexual expression. Puritan conservatism had given way to Calvinist repression and it was believed as irrefutable fact that women only experienced the sexual impulse through their innate desire to procreate. Therefore, Wolff is able to claim that, “… it is not enough to say that The Awakening is a novel about repression” (381). But rather it is, “… about a woman whose shaping culture has, in general, refused her the right to speak out freely” (381).
MarketHouseBooksLtd. London: Penguin, 1998. Credo Reference.. Chopin, Kate. The Awakening: A Solitary Soul. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.