The Awakening opens in the late 1800s in Grand Isle, a summer holiday resort popular with the wealthy inhabitants of nearby New Orleans. Edna Pontellier is vacationing with her husband, Léonce, and their two sons at the cottages of Madame Lebrun, which house affluent Creoles from the French Quarter. Léonce is kind and loving but preoccupied with his work. His frequent business-related absences mar his domestic life with Edna. Consequently, Edna spends most of her time with her friend Adèle Ratignolle, a married Creole who epitomizes womanly elegance and charm. Through her relationship with Adèle, Edna learns a great deal about freedom of expression. Because Creole women were expected and assumed to be chaste, they could behave in a forthright and unreserved manner. Exposure to such openness liberates Edna from her previously prudish behavior and repressed emotions and desires.
Edna’s relationship with Adèle begins Edna’s process of “awakening” and self-discovery, which constitutes the focus of the book. The process accelerates as Edna comes to know Robert Lebrun, the elder, single son of Madame Lebrun. Robert is known among the Grand Isle vacationers as a man who chooses one woman each year—often a married woman—to whom he then plays “attendant” all summer long. This summer, he devotes himself to Edna, and the two spend their days together lounging and talking by the shore. Adèle Ratignolle often accompanies them.
At first, the relationship between Robert and Edna is innocent. They mostly bathe in the sea or engage in idle talk. As the summer progresses, however, Edna and Robert grow closer, and Robert’s affections and attention inspire in Edna several internal revelations. She feels more alive than ever before, and she starts to paint again as she did in her youth. She also learns to swim and becomes aware of her independence and sexuality. Edna and Robert never openly discuss their love for one another, but the time they spend alone together kindles memories in Edna of the dreams and desires of her youth. She becomes inexplicably depressed at night with her husband and profoundly joyful during her moments of freedom, whether alone or with Robert. Recognizing how intense the relationship between him and Edna has become, Robert honorably removes himself from Grand Isle to avoid consummating his forbidden love. Edna returns to New Orleans a changed woman.
Ba...
... middle of paper ...
...worried about the outcome of her passionate but confused actions. Already reeling under the weight of Adèle’s admonition, Edna begins to perceive herself as having acted selfishly.
Edna returns to her house to find Robert gone, a note of farewell left in his place. Robert’s inability to escape the ties of society now prompts Edna’s most devastating awakening. Haunted by thoughts of her children and realizing that she would have eventually found even Robert unable to fulfill her desires and dreams, Edna feels an overwhelming sense of solitude. Alone in a world in which she has found no feeling of belonging, she can find only one answer to the inescapable and heartbreaking limitations of society. She returns to Grand Isle, the site of her first moments of emotional, sexual, and intellectual awareness, and, in a final escape, gives herself to the sea. As she swims through the soft, embracing water, she thinks about her freedom from her husband and children, as well as Robert’s failure to understand her, Doctor Mandelet’s words of wisdom, and Mademoiselle Reisz’s courage. The text leaves open the question of whether the suicide constitutes a cowardly surrender or a liberating triumph.
have realized that Edna, because of her different upbringings, would not know how to deal with Robert's actions. In one way or another he was the one that helped start their feeling towards each other.
The irony in Robert’s desire to make Edna his wife is that Robert left to be way from Edna because she was married to Mr. Pontiellier, but now Robert is back with even deeper emotions for her. For example, Robert states, “There in Mexico I was thinking of you”, which leads to the conclusion that Robert does demonstrate deep feelings for Edna and her hand in marriage.
Her transformation and journey to self-discovery truly begins on the family’s annual summer stay at Grand Isle. “At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life- that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions. That summer at Grand Isle she began to loosen a little of the mantle of reserve that had always enveloped her” (Chopin 26). From that point onward, Edna gains a deeper sense of desire for self-awareness and the benefits that come from such an odyssey. She suddenly feels trapped in her marriage, without being in a passionately romantic relationship, but rather a contractual marriage. Edna questions her ongoing relationship with Leonce; she ponders what the underlying cause of her marriage was to begin with; a forbidden romance, an act of rebellion against her father, or a genuine attraction of love and not lust? While Edna internally questions, she begins to entertain thoughts of other men in her life, eventually leading to sensuous feelings and thoughts related to sexual fantasy imagined through a relationship with Robert Lebrun. Concurrently, Edna wavers the ideas so clearly expected by the society- she analyzes and examines; why must women assimilate to rigid societal standards while men have no such
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.
On the Grand Isle, the constant presence of the ocean begins a metamorphosis within Edna that alters her perspective of herself in relation to others. She begins to fulfill her desires and abandon her responsibilities as a wife and mother to her family, in order to pursue a life of independence. Allowing her to fulfill her desires to be a painter and be with Robert. Critical moments of self-reflection for Edna occur in the presence of the ocean. It is at the ocean where she first realizes her desire to be independent.
The Awakening sheds light on the desire among many women to be independent. Throughout the novel Edna conducts herself in a way that was disavowed by many and comes to the realization that her gender prevented her from pursuing what she believed would be an enjoyable life. As the story progresses Edna continues to trade her family obligations for her own personal pleasures. This behavior would not have been accepted and many even criticize the novel for even speaking about such activities. Kate Chopin essentially wrote about everything a women couldn’t do. Moreover, it also highlights the point that a man is able to do everything Edna did, but without the same
In the novel, during many instances, intricate intimacies are illustrated. “No multitude of words could have been more significant than those moments of silences, or more pregnant with the first-felt throbbings of desire.” (30) Robert, in pursuit of Edna unlocks her sexual awakening alongside his social awakening. Robert becomes aware that he must step out of the boundaries and evolve as a man. Yet Robert still stumbles in his path. He and Edna have a common bond. They both attempt to defy the norms of society. Robert respects Edna’s yearning for individualism and only seeks to accompany her on that journey by form of marriage. However, he struggles to fight what societal ordainment. He lacks the key to break societies chains. He can’t simply let go of the expectation of marriage within this era. On the contrary his relationship with Edna gives him an optimistic view on his love life. “His search has always hitherto been fruitless, and he has sunk back, disheartened, into the sea. But to-night he found Mrs. Pontelllier.” (29) His passion for Edna, conveys his innocent hope for repressive love between himself and Edna. He and Edna
Robert Lebrun is a casual character with ideas that are contrary to those of other young men. Every person has heard of the teenager or young man who has had an affair with someone, however, Robert never has the intention (initially) of persuading Edna away from her man. Robert is a respectable young man who attends to one woman every summer. The story states, “Since the age of fifteen, which was eleven years before, Robert each summer at Green Isle had constituted himself the devoted attendant of some fair dame or damsel” (10). This quote is extremely significant. He looks after ladies summer after summer, tending to their every need. According to the Creoles, there is nothing wrong with it, yet on page nineteen, Madame Ratignolle asks Robert to do something uncharacteristically different. “‘Do me a favor Robert’… ‘I only ask for once, leave Mrs. Pontellier alone.’” Robert says he does not see a problem with tending to Edna, he does not think that she will take him seriously. In a way, this quote also provides the reader with a bit of foreshadowing. He does not leave her alone in the beginning, and they are together in the end, until Edna finds “true freedom” in death. Robert’s maturity is another notable characteristic. When he realizes Edna is falling in love, he leaves. He does not want to be an interruption in a married relationship. Yes, he admits he loves her through the actions he does. He also
At first Edna only misses Robert greatly and wonders why he never writes her like he promised he would. She does get to read letters in which Robert has sent others instead of her.
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 begins set in Grande Isle which is the summer get-away for a few families of New Orleans "upper-class". It is a community of cottages owned by the Lebrun family. Edna Pontellier and her husband Leonce summer there with there two children. This is the setting where Edna also develops a close relationship with Robert Lebrun. He is one of Madame Lebrun's sons who helps her run the cottages for the Pontellier's and the Ratingnolle's. The book begins and ends with Edna and her attraction to the water. Throughout the story water plays a symbolic part in the unfolding of Edna and her relationship to Robert and also her awakening to a new outlook on life along with an independence that takes her away from her family and the socially constraining life in which she no longer can see herself a part of.
Edna’s first action that starts off her route to freedom from her relationship is when she fell in love with Robert. Edna had already married a man that she had not loved but he has not been treating her a...
Edna's awakening begins with her vacation to the beach. There, she meets Robert Lebrun and develops an intense infatuation for him, an infatuation similar to those which she had in her youth and gave up when she married. The passionate feelings beginning to overwhelm her are both confusing and exciting. They lead to Edna beginning to ponder what her life is like and what she is like as a person. The spell of the sea influences these feelings which invite "the soul . . . to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation" (Chopin 57). Edna begins to fall under the sea's spell and begins to evaluate her feelings about the life that she has.
Her novel was considered immoral not only for its depictions of female sexual desire but also for portraying a woman that went against the typical social and gender norms. When the book opens, Edna Pontellier is an obedient wife and mother vacationing at Grand Isle with her family. However, things begin to change as Edna becomes close to a man named Robert Lebrun. Before they act on their mutual romantic interest in each other, Robert leaves for Mexico. Edna is lonely without his companionship, but shortly after her return to New Orleans, she picks up the male equivalent of a mistress, Alcee Arobin. Although she does not love him, he awakens various sexual passions within
The sexual aspect of Edna’s awakening is formed through her relationship with a supporting character, Robert LeBrun. In the beginning of the novel, Robert assigns himself to become the helper of Mrs. Pontellier and his advances help to crack the barrier in which Edna is placed in due to her role as a woman of the Victorian era. Her feelings begin to manifest themselves as she intends to liberate herself from her husband and run away with Robert. He on the other hand has no intention of having a sexual affair because of the role placed upon him as a man of the Victorian era which is not to destroy families. Her quest for complete independence ultimately brings her to committing suicide at the end of the story. Her suicide does not represent a disappointment in how she cannot conform to the society around her but a final awakening and symbol for her liberation.