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The similarities and differences between realism and naturalism
The similarities and differences between realism and naturalism
Critical Analysis of The Awakening Essay
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The writing of Kate Chopin shows elements of both Realism and Naturalism; Chopin’s characters are dynamic, the story is almost nearly always open ended, and there is a definite experience of the commonplace - textbook characteristics of Realism; however, these same characters are displayed with an underlying determinism and cover taboo topics - denoting a stronger sense of Naturalism (Scheidenhelm). Therefore, despite how it may appear at first, Kate Chopin is not an author of the Realism genre but instead is part of the Naturalism genre.
An excellent article by Richard Lehan, “Literary Naturalism and Its Transformations,” describes the “naturalistic narrative”: “There is thus a romantic dilemma at the heart of a naturalistic narrative: naturalistic characters pursue an ideal that puts them in motion at the same time that it is beyond achieving.” (228) This brings us square into the plot of Chopin’s last published, and perhaps most well-known work - “The Awakening” (Chopin 881-1002); the main character was faced with a conflict, loss, and ostracization due to her desire to be something other than what society expected of her. In a separate article by Linda Kornasky for Angelo State University, she explains some of the troubles Chopin faced when she published “The Awakening”:
During the recovery process for The Awakening, Kate Chopin's critics frequently expressed their disappointment that this novel, which had been mischaracterized as trivial and/or obscene by many reviewers...and thus it did not immediately become an important literary milestone to novelists then coming of age. (197)
As mentioned in the introduction, a hallmark of a naturalistic tale was covering taboo topics in a work. “The Awakening” covers many topics that...
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...t rather one of Naturalism.
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate, and Edmund Wilson. The Complete Works of Kate Chopin (Southern Literary Studies). Ed. Per Seyersted. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2006. Print.
Kornasky, Linda. "Discovery Of A Treasury." Studies In American Naturalism 6.2 (2011): 197-215. Academic Search Complete. Web. 7 Mar. 2014.
Lehan, Richard. "Literary Naturalism And Its Transformations." Studies In American Naturalism 7.2 (2012): 228-245. Academic Search Complete. Web. 7 Mar. 2014.
Scheidenhelm, Carol. "Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism." Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism. Loyola University Chicago, 14 Aug. 2007. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. .
Shen, Dan. "Implied Author, Overall Consideration, And Subtext Of "Désirée's Baby.." Poetics Today 31.2 (2010): 285-311. Academic Search Complete. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Cambridge UP, 1988. Papke, Mary E. Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1990. Seyersted, Per. Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography.
Chopin, Kate. "The Awakening." The Norton Anthology of American Literature.. Gen. ed. Nina Baym. 8th ed. Vol. C. New York: Norton, 2012. 561-652. Print.
When Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" was published at the end of the 19th Century, many reviewers took issue with what they perceived to be the author's defiance of Victorian proprieties, but it is this very defiance with which has been responsible for the revival in the interest of the novel today. This factor is borne out by Chopin's own words throughout her Preface -- where she indicates that women were not recipients of equal treatment. (Chopin, Preface ) Edna takes her own life at the book's end, not because of remorse over having committed adultery but because she can no longer struggle against the social conventions which deny her fulfillment as a person and as a woman. Like Kate Chopin herself, Edna is an artist and a woman of sensitivity who believes that her identity as a woman involves more than being a wife and mother. It is this very type of independent thinking which was viewed as heretical in a society which sought to deny women any meaningful participation.
Kate Chopin wrote for a reason and with a sense of passion and desire. She lived the way she wanted to and wrote what she felt, thought, and wanted to say. Kate wrote for many years and her popularity was extreme until critical disapproval of her novel, The Awakening, a story that portrayed women’s desires of independence and control of their own sexuality. Most men condemned this story, while women applauded her for it. Kate wrote with a sense of realism and naturalism and she created a voice that is unique and unmatched. The voice gave a view of the female role in society and contributed to the beginning of the later feminist movements. In 1915, Fred Lewis Pattee wrote, "some of Chopin's work is equal to the best that has been produced in France or even in America. She displayed what may be described as a native aptitude for narration amounting almost to genius" (qtd. in Amazon.com “About the Author”). Kate Chopin was a 19th century American author who cared about women and their rights. She was a bold writer who had a huge impact on how the world should treat women.
Women of the 1800s struggled through life, and fought for the same rights that men had. They were often stuck in relationships that made them unhappy. Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening hoping to demonstrate the life of a woman searching for a new life. Chopin lived the life of a curious woman in the 1800s. Normally “… the role [of wifehood] has traditionally satisfied a woman’s love and for a feeling of belonging” (Skaggs, 2) but for Chopin, the circumstance was different. She believed that becoming a wife and a mother forced her to subordinate herself from masculine authority. She lost many people in her life and had to begin supporting her family at a very young age. Then, later in her life, “she found herself thrust into another new role, adjusting again to new relationships with people and to a new image of herself” (Skaggs, 2). All of these experiences in Chopin’s life helped her to develop the main character of her novel; a young woman striving for love, freedom and independence.
Works Cited Franklin, R. F. "The Awakening and the Failure of the Psyche. " American Literature 56 (Summer 1984): 510-526. Platizky, R. "Chopin's Awakening. " Explicator 53 (Winter 1995): 99-102. Seyersted, P. Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. A Norton Critical Edition: Kate Chopin: The Awakening. Ed. Margo Culley. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994. 3-109.
Kenneth Eble states, “…She undertook to give the unsparing truth about women’s submerged life” (2). Speaking solely about Kate Chopin, this quote puts emphasis upon Chopin’s disputes with her society. She used her writing as a technique to indirectly explicate her life by the means of narrating her stories through the characters she created. Kate Chopin was one of the modern writers of her time, one who wrote novels concentrating on the common social matters related to women. Her time period consisted of other female authors that focused on the same central theme during the era: exposing the unfairness of the patriarchal society, and women’s search for selfhood, and their search for identity. In Chopin’s novel The Awakening, she incorporates the themes mentioned above to illustrate the veracity of life as she understood it. A literary work approached by the feminist critique seeks to raise awareness of the importance and higher qualities of women. Women in literature may uncover their strengths or find their independence, raising their own self recognition. Several critics deem Chopin as one of the leading feminists of her age because she was willing to publish stories that dealt with women becoming self-governing, who stood up for themselves and novels that explored the difficulties that they faced during the time. Chopin scrutinized sole problems and was not frightened to suggest that women desired something that they were not normally permitted to have: independence. Chopin’s decision to focus on and emphasize the imbalances between the sexes is heavily influenced by her upbringing, her feelings towards society, and the era she subsisted in.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 535-625. Print.
Davis, Sara de Saussure. "Kate Chopin." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 12 pp. 59-71. Literature Resource Center. Gale Group Databases. Central Lib. Fort Worth, TX. 11 Feb. 2003
... to mind works written by subsequent generations of women novelists. One sees Chopin’s text straining toward, among other elements, the narrative innovations achieved in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and The Waves. One is also reminded of the “lyric” novels of the American writer Carole Maso, whose so-called experimental works typically eschew plot and conventional linear narration. In a recent book of essays, Maso admits that her erotic novel Aureole was “shaped by desire’s magical and subversive qualities,” she notes; “[desire] imposed its swellings, its ruptures, its erasures, it motions.” (Break Every Rule, 115). If contemporary authors like Maso are able to access such boundless spheres of narrative play, it may be due in part to the pioneering efforts of writers such as Chopin, who first began to articulate the need for such liberating spaces in the novel.
Kate Chopin is best known for her novel, The Awakening, published in 1899. After its publication, The Awakening created such uproar that its author was alienated from certain social circles in St. Louis. The novel also contributed to rejections of Chopin's later stories including, "The Story of An Hour" and "The Storm." The heavy criticism that she endured for the novel hindered her writing. The male dominated world was simply not ready for such an honest exploration of female independence, a frank cataloguing of a woman's desires and her search for fulfillment outside of the institution of marriage.
Chopin, Kate. Complete Novels and Stories. Ed. Sandra M. Gilbert. New York: Library of America, 2002. Print.
Chopin, Kate. A. “The Story of an Hour.” Baym 1609-1611.
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. “Kate Chopin.” Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, Sep2013. Academic Research Database. 1 Nov. 2013