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The Death of Edna Pontellier The struggles of Edna Pontellier throughout her everyday life in a society that she feels she doesn’t belong in, is developed through the writing of Kate Chopin. As her character develops, Edna’s final decision of suicide illustrates her defeat in the face of society. In, The Awakening, Kate Chopin employs poetic diction and anaphora to emphasize and illuminate Edna’s awakening and how her death positively affected her character development.
She even committed suicide due to the fact of how badly she needed to free herself from the Creole lifestyle. Edna, a remarkable lady in a sense, rebelled against the norms of society to openly be herself. People like Edna, or people brave enough to take a chance to change societal norms, come rare to find, especially during the late 1800’s. Edna never agreed to anything she did not want, after the marriage to Leonce, and was quite straight-forward with her desires. Edna, ideally, is a great role model to look up to in today’s world for filling that brave, young woman role to not let society shape her, despite the few occurrences she had intimate moments with multiple men or her carelessness towards her children.
Claim: The repeatedly mentioned characters, the lovers and the lady in black, symbolize blissful ignorance versus a harsh reality. While there are many characters in The Awakening that are only mentioned while Edna Pontellier is on the island, none stick out more than the young lovers and the lady in black. They are almost always talked about sequentially, the lovers before the lady in black. There is one time when only one is spoken of without the other, and that is when Edna, Robert, and several others went to the religious service at, “The quaint little Gothic church of Our Lady of Lourdes” (30). It can be inferred from both her dark wardrobe and from her extreme devoutness, that the lady in black was a widow.
I grew up hearing the saying that a little girl could have an old soul, or that someone is well beyond their years. These sayings are popular to societies, because they try to explain why certain individuals differentiate from the acceptable norms in ways that may be more complicated than just personality traits. In The Awakening, Edna Pontellier is no exception. Her society’s expectations differ from who she is and how she is willing to act so that she would fit in. Chapter one of The Awakening begins the story with several examples of how Edna does not fit in with her society.
The awakening of Edna Pontellier has undergone the ability to accept the end result of the turmoil situations, whether it was a negative or positive, it revealed Edna’s heroism. Despite Edna Pontellier’s nature of her particular situation (time period of the late 1800s) she expressed a great sum of bravery and valor. Edna Pontellier was a hero of her own
To break the traditions of a womanly role Edna had to first challenge her husband’s authority over her. Edna is sleeping outside waiting for Léonce to come home, and finally he comes home in the wee hours of the morning. Then, Edna wouldn’t come in the house after Léonce called her into the house. Léonce says, “’Edna, dear, are you not coming in soon?’
Women during Edna’s time were supposed to be dedicated to their husbands and children, however, Edna yearned for her own independence, and as a result of wanting her own independence Edna knew that she was seen as a terrible person. For instance Edna wanted to “…try to determine what character of a woman I am; for, candidly, I don't know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can't convince myself that I am. I must think about it" (27.4).
Lèonce Pontellier In The Awakening In Kate Chopin’s novella, The Awakening, Léonce Pontellier, Edna Pontellier, and their children spend the summer in La Grand Isle. Grand Isle is a town in Louisiana, populated with Creole families. Not able to meet the Creole social standards and be true to herself, Edna, with the help of her husband, becomes aware that she is meant to be an independant woman. Lèonce’s high focus on his image and business makes it hard for him to see his wife's process of self-discovery, he becomes apathetic and can even be ill- tempered towards Edna.
Music, as well as art, had influenced her emotional/ personal awakening to the fact that, drawing allows Edna to find love, peace within herself, and is the only thing she actually has control over. Her imaginative dream of being alone open the doors for her departure from Leonce's house which is a form of individuality in which seeks to build her own autonomy, she finds a new house that she named Pigeon illustrating the ideals of not being able escape society even after she moves, representing the fact that she is like a bird in which, the bird can’t escape the cage he’s in, as for Edna she can’t escape the role of woman in society.(Pg31) “ Edna began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul.” after haven slept alone in the hammock,she's
Edna continually questions whether or not she is destined to live a life of subordination or if she can find her own freedom. Edna Pontellier’s defiant nature is brought out
Edna Pontellier in the novel, The Awakening, is a self-driven woman determined to become independent and free whilst undergoing a significant change in behavior throughout the novel. She attempts to withstand societal expectations by doing certain things that were not socially acceptable during this time period. While doing so, she experiences many different struggles during her awakening. These struggles that Edna undergoes may be described as internal as well as external. In the awakening, there is a constant conflict between inner and outer Edna.
The ending of Kate Chopin's novel “The Awakening” has been long debated over whether or not the main character Edna commits suicide in the end. Many critics and readers argue that her death, in the end, was not intentional and rather the consequence of her actions. Others believe that she never actually died in the end and the book ends before she swims back to shore. Contrary to these ideas, I think that Edna's suicide was intentional as she had planned it right after she found Robert's notes saying he was leaving. She planned the suicide that night not specifically wanting to die but feeling as if she had no other choice and death was her last hope at an “awakening”.
McKenna Martin Mrs. Schroder AP Literature 3 January 2018 The Awakening Outside Essay - 1999 Prompt The Awakening showcases Edna Pontellier, a housewife residing in New Orleans, Louisiana during the early 1900s. Edna Pontellier is married to Leonce Pontellier and they have two sons together. Edna is consumed in internal conflicts throughout the entire novel.
Edna’s life is less rough than the women because Kate Chopin the author of the Awakening plays with the connection of reality vs. appearance. This connection highlights the situation of people as she puts on a mask to fit the social expectations. In the novel we can see, Edna lives in a life with two different personalities. We can see this at the beginning of the book in chapter 7, “even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a very early
This novel, The Awakening, is about a woman named Edna Pontellier learns to think of herself as an independent human being. Also, Edna Pontellier refuses to obey against the social norms by leaving her husband Leónce Pontellier and having an affair with Robert Lebrun. Kate Chopin describes societal expectations and the battle of fitting the mold of motherhood in the Awakening by how Edna Pontellier and Adele Ratignolle contribute to their family in different ways. Edna Pontellier’s attitude toward motherhood is that she is not a perfect mother-women. Adele Ratignolle’s attitude toward motherhood is that she is a perfect mother-women.
