Pursuing the New Life
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.
Edna Pontellier, the main character of The Awakening, attempts to find a new life through which she can pursue her dreams of finding love and gaining independence. After an “accidental” marriage, Edna is trapped in an obedient life. She does not passionately love her husband and continues to tolerate her children, while she dreams of a better life that she would be able to truly enjoy. Edna is expected to please her husband, care for her children, and not anything more. Subsequently, she stumbles upon an awakening with the help of a young man named Robert Lebrun. The awakening assists her in a search for her secret persona. This inquisitive woman begins to explore new opportunities and finds a light to guide her to the ...
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... that Chopin created Edna to reflect her own feelings of life.
Edna Pontellier separates from her submissive life to pursue freedom, independence, and love with another man. She strives for freedom so that she can uncover her hidden persona. Independence and love fall into the same faction. Edna wants independence from her husband so she can find someone who will give her the support she needs. All of these aspects contribute to the growth of a new and improved life. She wishes to fit in and pursue her goals. However, in the end, she chooses freedom over everything else. Jumping into the water, thinking about Robert, Leonce, and her children, Edna surrenders to the ocean. Ironically, the ocean is a symbol of freedom. Many people say that “Edna was the precursor of the modern era American woman…” (Musere). She is the inspiration to other women all over the world.
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.
In the late 1800's, as well as the early 1900's, women felt discriminated against by men and by society in general. Men generally held discriminatory and stereotypical views of women. Women had no control over themselves and were perceived to be nothing more than property to men. They were expected to live up to a perfect image that society had created, while trying to comply with their husbands' desires. While many women felt dissatisfied with their lives, they would not come out and say it. However, in 1899, Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening, which showed women that they were not alone. This novel showed the discriminatory views and treatment towards women. It also distinctly indicates the dissatisfaction that women felt in their lives. Because of the roles that society has given them, women are not able to seek and fulfill their own psychological and sexual drives. In The Awakening, Chopin uses Edna Pontellier to show that women do not want to be restricted by the roles that society has placed on them.
The Awakening, by Kate Chopin seems to fit neatly into twentieth century ideals. Chopin addresses psychological issues that must have been difficult for people of the late nineteenth century to grasp. Just as Edna died a premature death, Chopin's book died too. The rejection of this book, at the time, ironically demonstrates the pressure many women must have felt to conform to society. Chopin shows the reader, through Edna Pontellier, that society restricts women the right to individuality. This restriction by society can be seen in the clothing Victorian women wore during the time.
Females in the late 1800s were expected to know their place in society and stay within parameters that were set by the population. These parameters including being a perfect mother figure, and needing a husband to provide a place to live, food, and money for spending. This meant that females were not culturally allowed to be free. This idea was so ingrained in the culture that the influential female writers of the time wrote stories where the wife was wrong and returned to her husband after she sought freedom. These stories came to an end when Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening in 1899. The Awakening attacks the cultural lack of rights and freedoms for females, specifically the sexual freedoms that females do not have. The novella describes
In the late 1800s, the excessive limitations placed on women took away much of their freedom and individuality. In this time period, inequality among genders was prominent, resulting in an expected obligation for women to obey the commands of men. In The Awakening, Kate Chopin shapes the main character, Edna Pontellier, to represent the common woman at the time, who struggles to gain back the rights she deserves. As Edna finds self empowerment with the ocean as her inspiration, she battles resistance from the people who have constrained her all along.
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.
...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.
Bryfonski, Dedria, ed. Women's Issues in Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven, 2012. 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.
Authors like Chopin helped people realize what was going on during the 1800s. They were able to incorporate the thoughts of women, and what duties society expected them to fulfill during the era. Although these authors were criticized because of what they wrote, they were honest with their opinions and outlooks. According to the Los Angeles Sunday Times, Chopin “…wanted to preach the doctrine of the right of the individual to have what he wants, no matter whether or not it may be good for him” (4). The Los Angeles Sunday Times acknowledges that Chopin’s focus was to convey the rights of women no matter how consequential it might be. Kate Chopin’s upbringing, views on society, and the era she lived in are all incorporated in her novel The Awakening, which expresses the inequalities between male and female.
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.
This story represents the lives of women back in the early 19th century. They were so closed in by societal norm and rules that many of them did not have the freedom to be who they wanted to be, or even live they life they wanted to live. The story “The Awakening” is a clear example of this scenario. Edna Pontellier did not have the courage to strength to face society so she felt like she had to die to find her freedom.
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 boldly uncovered an attitude of feminism to an unknowing society in her novel The Awakening. Her excellent work of fiction was not acknowledged at the time she wrote it because feminism had not yet come to be widespread. Chopin rebelled against societal norms (just like Edna) of her time era and composed the novel, The Awakening, using attitudes of characters in favor to gender, variations in the main character, descriptions and Edna's suicide to show her feminist situation. Society during Chopin's time era alleged women to be a feeble, dependent gender whose place laid nothing above mothering and housekeeping. In The Awakening, Chopin conveys the simple attitudes of society toward women mainly through her characters Leonce, Edna, Madame Ratignolle, and Madame Reisz. She uses Leonce and Madame Ratignolle to depict examples of what was considered adequate in society. In a critical essay written by Emily Toth, she states that "The Awakening is a story of what happens when a woman does not accept her place in the home. The novel moves us because it illustrates the need for women's psychological, physical, social, and sexual emancipation--the goals of feminists in the twentieth century as well as the nineteenth" (Toth). However, Chopin takes account of the opposing characters of Edna and Madame Reisz in a determination to express desires and wants concealed by the female gender.
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.