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Edna Pontellier's Death In The Awakening

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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. In the last few moments of her life, Edna’s death is illuminated by Kate Chopin’s use of poetic diction. While she removed the weight of her clothing, moments before her death, Kate Chopin describes Edna’s surroundings by stating, “The foamy wavelets curled up to her white …show more content…

As Edna is walking into the sea, Kate Chopin expands on the setting and states, “The water was chill, but she walked on. The water was deep, but she lifted her white body and reached out with a long sweeping stroke” (176). The emphasis is placed on the water, explaining how it affected Edna. Kate Chopin utilizes anaphora to accentuate the choices Edna makes and how it defines the meaning of becoming aware and conscious of one’s self wellbeing over others. Furthermore, Kate Chopin continues with, “She went on and on. She remembered the night she swam far out, and recalled the terror that seized her at the fear of being unable to regain the shore. She did not look back now…” (176). Edna and her recollection of the sea is accentuated and developed to demonstrate how she has overcome her fear. Kate Chopin’s use of the repetition at the beginning of each phrase adds emphasis on Edna’s emotion to the situation she is in. The difference in the Edna Pontellier at the start of the novel and the Edna in the last few paragraphs, is fear. Kate Chopin develops Edna’s character so rigorously, she creates a whole new character by the end of the novel. Edna’s feat of overcoming her fears reveals the powerful message of being brave and finding

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Mademoiselle Reisz’s observation pertains to Edna in The Awakening because Edna attempts to “soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice,” but in the end, she fails and collapses into a “sad spectacle” by struggling to find her moral self, which was to fight back against her bruised and exhausted bird she has become, but ultimately lost strength of hope in a better life. Many women in the early 20th century never did "soar"; they would never go above and beyond what was expected by society. Edna Pontellier, attempts to soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice by making a statement about the person she wants to become. Edna states “one of these days, I’m going to pull myself together for a while and think-try to determine what character of a woman I am.

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Albert D. Saba Mr. Amoroso AP Literature Period: 3AP Topic: 1 LAP The Awakening A novel by Kate Chopin Will the chains and the unspoken pain unshackle through one’s heroic individualism? In the novel, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Edna Pontellier becomes a heroic figure to herself as well as for women through the search of her self-identity.

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Edna went to go swimming, but she had suicide in mind rather that swimming. As she was walking towards the beach she thought to herself, “The Children appeared before her like antagonists who had overcome her; who had overpowered and sought to drag her into the soul’s slavery for the rest of her days. But she knew a way to elude them.” (Chopin 159). In order for Edna to defeat the societal norms and not be bound in chains from her husband and traditional womanhood; Edna had to leave her motherly role in the family and she stubbornly went against the expectations of her husband and society.

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Edna fully understands that society would brand her as a terrible woman, but she does not view herself as a bad person. There is an external and internal difference that Edna hopes to one day reconcile. Chopin, instead of creating tension within Edna, created tension within the society and Edna with her newfound independence does not mind how society classifies her. Decisively, it can be concluded that the tension between outward conformity and inward questioning builds the meaning of the novel by examining Edna’s role as a wife, mother, and as nontraditional woman in the traditional Victorian period.

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In addition, the search for self-identity is viewed as important in today’s society. Thus, these confliction attributes lead the reader to identify Edna as morally ambiguous. Categorizing complex characters as purely good or purely evil is not one of the easiest of tasks. As a result, it is best to characterize them as morally ambiguous. In Edna’s case, she is morally ambiguous due to her romantic affiliations and role-defying actions, but both are immensely vital to Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” as a complete whole.

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Edna experiences the hardships of striving to break as a “ [feeling] like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul … the exuberance which had sustained and exalted her spirit left her helpless and yielding to the conditions which crowded her in … clutching feebly at the post before passing into the house.” (79). Through the imagery of a weight on her mind and feeble body, Chopin conveys her inability to find the strength to break the chains of the archetypal female identity. Extremely fleeting, her momentary empowerment clearly validates her circular growth rather than a building of personal development.

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Edna Pontellier is a strong, independent female character stuck in a society, depicted in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, which oppresses women. Edna constantly struggles with her growing realization of her restricted life style and her desire to be free from societal expectations. Chopin describes moments of Edna’s sleep (or a lack thereof) to allude to her “awakening” out of the stereotypical view of women. Edna’s developing understanding, starting as a simple realization, becoming a slightly confused desire to be free of society, coming to the climax of Edna’s inability to cope with the caged life society places upon here, is highlighted through Chopin's theme of awakening.

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Kate Chopin stood as a feminist icon at the turn of the nineteenth century with feminism running rampant through her short stories. In The Awakening, Edna Pontellier is often seen as the ideal feminist, due to her sought out independence from her husband and her family. Often readers overlook Madame Adele Ratignolle as a feminist because she is thought to be the perfect mother and wife, unlike Edna as she separates herself from her family in search of a personal awakening in a way that would be seen as selfish. The reader is led to believe that Adele is the complete opposite of Edna because she is the “mother-woman” of the story. Madame Adele is not perfect by any means; regardless of what stereotype the narrator tries to place her in.

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Edna Smithers left her house at precisely 5AM to take the ridiculously short walk to the local shop, she began the walk in what appeared to be a slightly weird outfit; a scarf with more stripes than a zebra, a yellow coat that looked like a New York cab, and some wolly jeans that looked like they been spat out by the washing machine as the fur was on the outside. All the passing pedestrians took a look at her strange outfit and crossed the road as quick as a flash to escape her pulverising gaze. Her hair was purpler than a freshly cut amethyst gleaming encased in a lump of dull rock, and her eyes were like bullets shooting in to you soul seeing everything. When she reached the local Tesco she stopped and stood as still as a statue just to scan

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Edna spends her final moments walking alongside the shore, naked and at her most vulnerable. Chopin personifies the water to emphasize the intimacy of this moment, describing the sea’s voice as “seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude” (175). Just like her despair, the noise of the ocean surrounds Edna completely, asking her to come closer. It isn’t a surprise as to why the ocean appeals so much to Edna, due to its vastness and its promise of escape from reality, just like when she first discovered her swimming ability and swam as far away from shore as possible. It’s only when she looks back at the shore and remembers her duty to her family that her swimming falters, and

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Edna has “the best husband in the world,” to which she was “forced to admit that she knew of none better” (Chopin III). Edna has to choose between staying in her unhappy marriage with her husband for her children which she has grown accustomed to his absence over prolonged periods or leave him for her true love Robert and forget about her family because she can not have both. The physical journey of Edna Pontellier in The Awakening by Kate Chopin, is one of lasciviousness, self-determination to become independent, and one of tragedy that develops from the first display of oppression in beginning of the novel until the last gasp of freedom at the very end of the novel to captivate the reader in this world where women are socially exploited. The journey of physically leaving her husband for another man which was incredibly frowned upon by society in that time period and even in society today.

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Edna is completely enthralled in the water at this point: “The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation” (Chopin 18). This line envelops her entire life; she cannot bare to live any longer, so she takes the next step, she takes the plunge. In the end of the book, she repeats a line she said directly following the previous quote, “The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace” (Chopin 18, 156). This repetition shows that everything she experienced in life did not live up to what she wanted. Her presumed suicide defines an actual awakening in her character.

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Her frequent vacations to the island, like her frequent dips into the ocean, begin to spark a personal change within the woman. A Creole man, Robert, shows Edna a new dimension of feelings she never knew she lived without, and she begins to look through life through a new lens. Having been awakened for the first time, she sees injustice and mistreatment where she saw none before. Chopin uses Edna’s new observations and reactions to the culture around her to illustrate the myriad ways women were marginalized. In an ironic twist, the white woman from Kentucky proves to be more liberated than her more traditional husband, who grew up

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It seems that Edna was happy and enjoying her time, which makes her fate even more unexpected. Spangler’s claim of the sudden ending is further supported as the novel states, “But after all, a radiant peace settled upon her when she at last found herself alone” (Chopin 74 ). These words make it clear that Edna was at peace and satisfied with her accomplishment of finding herself as there is no indication she is unhappy and depressed, yet even at peace with her decisions. Additionally, Chopin states, “There was with her a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual.

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She summarizes this thought when she says: “‘I would give up the unessential; I would give up my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself’” (Chopin, 46). This sentiment is repeated moments before her suicide, because at that point, she truly understands what she means. For her, her body and life is what is tying her down, and because Edna feels as though she can conquer death, for her it is what will give her the true freedom of soul and self that she feels she cannot find in society. For both the boy and Edna, the attractive nature of the sea shows how excessive individualism can be

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