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Comparing The Awakening And The Storm By Kate Chopin

1042 Words5 Pages

The Awakening and "The Storm," are written by Kate Chopin but have a couple things in common, like a character. Character is a big part in a story but have differences in every story. A character has moral qualities that lead to an individual, but can be different. Characters have different lives, emotions, and conflicts in every story or novel. The Awakening is about a woman named Edna, who has an affair with a man, named Robert. She loves Robert, but he left her because it was better to be separate from one another. (2018a, p. 24). "The Storm," is about a woman named, Calixta who is at home alone during a storm. Her husband and son are at a store worried about Calixta. An ex-lover stops by to visit Calixta, and end up having an affair. …show more content…

Irony is shown in The Awakening by love is a destructive force. Throughout the novel, Edna is stressed about her love life. She has a husband, who she does not care for much, but has children with him. Also, it was not common for husband and wife to divorce in her society. (2018a, p. 4). According to Kate Chopin: Early Feminist, " She, Edna Pontellier, is married, has children, and seems to be living the normal life of a happily married woman" (2017, para. 5). This quote represents how Edna is the irony in The Awakening, she goes against her society and cheats on her husband with other men. She does not really love her children or her husband. She loves Robert. Furthermore, irony is shown in "The Storm," because the story is situational irony. According to Dictionary.com, Situational irony occurs when there is a difference when something is expected to happen than what actually happens. (2018, para. 1). During the storm, Calixta has an affair with Alcee, but the readers did not expect that to happen. Also, Calixta represents irony in "The Storm," because she has an affair on her husband with an ex-lover. Her society was not common for divorces or affairs. So, Calixta went against her society forms. The similarity between Edna and Calixta is they both are examples of ironies in Kate Chopin's stories. Like mentioned before, they both had an affair with a lover, which is not common in a woman during their society, so that made each of them an example of irony in Chopin's

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Outward Conformity In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

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It is common for people in everyday society to conform to society’s expectations while also questioning their true desires. In the novel, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, the main protagonist Edna Pontellier is said to possess, "That outward existence which conforms, the inward life that questions." In other words, Edna outwardly conforms while questioning inwardly. Kate Chopin, uses this tension between outward conformity and inward questioning to build the meaning of the novel by examining Edna’s role as a wife, mother, and as nontraditional woman in the traditional Victorian period. Edna outwardly conforms to society’s expectations by marriage.

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Edna from Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” can be perceived as morally ambiguous because of her affiliations with other men, and role-defying actions; however, both contribute to “The Awakening” as a whole. Due to Edna being romantically involved with Robert, she can be perceived as morally

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Edna's Characterization In The Awakening

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Edna’s characterization throughout The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, describes Edna as someone with burning passion who desires to improve not only her life, but the lives of future generations. However Edna’s actions make her often seem weak to the oppressive people around her; sometimes, and in this case unfortunately, good ideas and beliefs are stopped cold by one’s surrounding influences. Edna’s feminist attitude, though formidable, is no match for the individuals who accept the current society’s customs. I find Edna to be a weak person from a general standpoint. However the story masks this obviousness fact by illustrating some of Edna’s questionable actions.

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Essay On Edna Pontellier's Suicide In The Awakening

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In the “Awakening”, the author, Kate Chopin broke the nineteenth century standards of the ideal woman through the main character Edna Pontellier which sparked a lot of controversy. Mrs. Pontellier throughout the book has a journey of self discovery, as an independent woman who rebels against the social norms by leaving her husband. Chopin reaches out to her audience of women, to stand up against the oppression that they served due to the roles that were pressed upon them as caretakers of the house and as accessories to their husbands. Kate Chopin ended “The Awakening” with the suicide of Mrs. Pontellier because that is how Chopin gave Mrs. Pontellier her freedom, a freedom and rebirth from the harsh society that many women had to live during those times. The ending of the book sparked a lot of controversy over the way that Chopin decided to Edna Pontellier to make Edna commit suicide.

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Jordan T. Carter is famously quoted as having said “I love women to death” in his interview with Complex. At the time of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, staged in nineteenth-century New Orleans, such a statement would have been obscene, indicative of a general shift in sentiment towards women and their role in American society today. Edna Pontellier’s sorrow is exacerbated by misogynistic social conventions that hinder her ability to relish life as she pleases. Edna is instead relegated to the duties of a traditional housewife bound in a fruitless marriage. The genetic structure behind Edna’s endless peril and struggle for self-autonomy is revealed in chapter 4 of the novella, when author Kate Chopin promulgated that the average women of Edna’s

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Essay On The Character Edna Pontellier In The Awakening

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The true awakening in the novel, and in Edna, is the awakening of self. Throughout the novel, she is on a transcendental journey of self-discovery, a journey that was not smooth sailing for women in the 19th century. Edna’s awakening formulates when she realizes that she wants more out of life and herself than just being a mother and a housewife. Deep inside her, she began to feel a pull toward liberty, freeing her from all the aspects of life which restrain her newfound flourishing identity. Eventually, Edna is able to fully separate herself from her marriage and society, and sets up her own small house, in order to dissociate from society and live the way she wants to.

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How Does Edna Pontellier's Search For Freedom

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In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening Edna Pontellier is searching for the meaning and purpose of her life. The way that she was raised differs from the Creole culture that she marries into where the women stay home to take care of the household and give their lives to their families. Edna disagrees with this and decides that she will start living for herself and do whatever she wants instead of what the society thinks she should do. The first thing she must do is gain her independence and freedom but she goes about this in the worst way by not caring for her children, leaving her husband without any concern, and then cheating on her husband.

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The major theme of The Awakening by Kate Chopin is finding oneself. This theme is shown mostly through Edna Pontellier. Edna’s quest throughout the whole book is to find herself and become independent. Before she chose to try and live her own life, she submitted to being nothing other than a wife and mother. Towards the start of the story she says “Looking at them reminded her of her rings, which she had given to her husband before leaving for the beach.

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In The Awakening, Kate Chopin uses gender roles to show that society is oppressive. During the time period that the novel was written, gender roles were very strict and they controlled all aspects of society. In fact, Jennifer Gray wrote, when discussing the impacts of gender roles, that “The hegemonic institutions of nineteenth-century society required women to be objects in marriage and in motherhood, existing as vessels of maternity and sexuality, with little opportunity for individuality” (53). The Awakening is a novel about Edna Pontellier's attempt to break free of the role she has been forced to assume by society through a spiritual, sexual and psychological awakening. Edna is a well off woman in society.

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In the late 1800s society assigned to women a specific role to play. The role included bearing children, caring for them, and honoring their husbands. People saw women who took jobs outside of the home or who never married as deranged. Kate Chopin highlights the female duties of the time in her novel, The Awakening, through the use of foils Edna and Adele. Adele represents the model of how an ideal women of the 19th century should behave and feel.

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The mere presence of sexual desire in Calixta is a feminist statement itself, as sex was considered out of a woman’s metaknowledge, which is shown as the storm passes by. The thunderstorm is used to illustrate the time span of the sexual encounter between Calixta and Alcee. For example, Calixta’s hesitant behavior ends as the first lightning strikes, her sexual desire grows as the storms roars while progressing and the two depart as the storm ends. Chopin paints sensual images in our minds as she describes the experience along with Calixta’s honesty of enjoying it, making a feminist statement again. Chopin boldly reveals the truths about sexual relationships, targeting those not in a sacred marriage and empowers women to appreciate their bodies and

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