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Edna Pontellier's Lousy Mother In The Awakening

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The role of a mother is to primarily care for her children and lead them in the right direction of growing up and becoming great individuals. Edna Pontellier is a mother and a well-liked woman with a sound family living in New Orleans during the late 1800s. Edna breaks away from societal roles and discovers her own identity that is independent from being a wife or mother to her children. While so, she fails to upkeep the duties any caring mother would withhold. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier demonstrates characteristics of a lousy mother as she neglects her children and leads them to failure. Edna lacks presence in her children’s lives and fails to love them in the way a mother should. During the majority of the summer, …show more content…

Edna does not partake in her civil duties as a woman. It is assumed that a mother would do anything her children, but she refuses. When talking with a friend, Edna admits that she “would give [her] life for [her] children, but [she] wouldn't give [herself],” (Chopin 64). Although Edna would sacrifice her physical self for her children, she would not give up her morals or self-respect. Edna portrays childish characteristics when she partakes in an illicit relationship, despite being married. Edna begins to fall in love with Robert, a man whom she met one summer at Grand Isle, an island just beside New Orleans. Edna prioritizes spending time with Robert instead of being with her family. This is a reflection of her immature decisions when Edna knows she has motherly responsibilities in her life but does not take care of. When Edna realizes she is unhappy with any outcome of her life, she decides to end it by swimming out to the sea and drowning. As a result, she leaves her children motherless. The decision is led when “despondency had come upon her there in the wakeful night, and had never lifted,” (Chopin 155). Edna believes that committing suicide is the only way of escaping her life as a wife and mother. She feels that she can not escape the responsibilities of her children regardless if she had been in a different situation or

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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.

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A mother is someone put into our lives for us to be nurtured, loved, protected, and raised into an intelligent human being. In The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Edna Pontellier was a selfish and lousy mother to her sons, she fantasizes over being an independent woman without being held back from the duty of being a mother. Edna realizes that her freedom and independence is all she has ever wanted in life. She will do anything in her power to be able to feel like she has a say in her life. Edna is a bad mother due to her lack of responsibility for her children and her various acts of selfishness.

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At first it might seem Edna does not care about her children, but in reality, Edna cares about her children, even if she has to sacrifice her life. But she won’t give up herself as a person. Mr. Pontellier was angry at his wife for not doing what she is suppose to do as a wife. Edna said the her husband, “I feel like painting….Perhaps I shan’t always feel like it”(108).

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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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The Awakening Essay Edna Pontellier in The Awakening strives to find her individuality and personal freedom. However, Edna lives in a time when women are expected to live their lives as wives and mothers, not as people with their own volition. When she begins to awaken from her state of submission she finds herself and strays outside the realm of social acceptance in doing so. She does not obey her husband’s will without question, she is not a mother-woman who devotes herself solely to her children. She would rather be wandering the city or painting than taking callers and keeping up the house.

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In the novel, Edna often feels like her marriage was a misfortune. For example, Edna believes,

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Some of Edna’s most obvious decisions immediately question her weakness to handle pressure. Edna’s inability to show compassion and care for her children challenge this normalcy for a mother of the time period; Edna considered her children “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” (Chopin 115). The children almost seemed like a burden, or a detriment to her. Edna’s doctor visit nearly foreshadows this mindset, where the doctor notes that

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In Kate Chopin’s novel “The Awakening,” Edna Pontellier’s suicide is a complex and piteous act that serves as a final awakening for her character. Throughout the novel, Edna is on a journey toward self-discovery and liberation. She struggles with societal expectations, the limitations of being a woman, as well as her own desires for freedom that evolve from the introduction of her character to her eventual suicide. Edna Pontellier’s suicide was her way of putting herself and what she desired over that of the environment around her. She chooses to assert her independence and autonomy through her final act of self-discovery.

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“They were women who idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals to grow wings as ministering angels” (Chopin 8). Mr. Pontellier did not want her to recognize herself as a person, he wanted her to live only for him and his children as a devoted mother-woman should. Returning back home to New Orleans was met with constant fighting because of Edna’s new determination to become her own person. “Mr. Pontellier had been a rather courteous husband so long as he met a certain tact submissiveness in his life. But her

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In Kate Chopin’ s novel, The Awakening, there are three identities inside of the female leading role, Edna Pontellier, being a wife, mother and own self. Edna was born in 19th century at the Vitoria period, a patriarchy society, women have low freedom to achieve personal goal. She married with Léonce Pontellier, a wealthy man with Creole descent. After having a child, her life is still unchangeable and as bored as before. Until she encountered Robert Leburn, Mademoiselle Reisz, and Alcée Arobin, her value of self-cognition has changed.

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After swimming successfully, she develops feelings for Robert. After this awakening, Edna starts to step back and rethink her entire life; her marriage, her role, and even herself. She realizes she feels sort of imprisoned in this life she has had for so long. Edna finally starts doing things for her, she is letting herself feel an attraction for another man even though she is married and she also gets into art and has everyone in the house model for her. Rather than doing things to get the house ready for her husband or spending time playing with her children, she is distracted by all her newly found

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Title: The Awakening Author: Kate Chopin Setting: Grand Isle and New Orleans in the early 19th century Genre: Tragedy Historical context: The Awakening takes place when women were seen as a man’s possession. Mr. Pontellier looks at Edna as a possession. Women were expected to stay devoted to their husband and children and remain a stereotypical housewife whose main job is to clean, cook and care for the children. (Adele) Edna rivals against these standards as she challenges society 's expectations of women during the early 19th century.

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If he were to say, ‘Here, Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,’ I should laugh at the both of you” (108). Throughout the story Edna’s feelings for Robert grow stronger and deeper, so that by the end of the novel she simply longs to be with him. Yet parallel to that growth Edna has discovered her self and developed her own identity. The idea of a transfer of ownership of her person from one man to another is abhorrent to her, so much so that it would cause her to abandon her dream of being with Robert. Though she wants that very much, she is unwilling to lose her own identity in the process as she did when she was with Mr. Pontellier.

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Kate Chopin’s The Awakening was written at the end of the nineteenth century, where many roles for women began to change; therefore, the it appears to have been a turning point for females (“The Role of the Wife and Mother”). These changes in female roles were mostly due to the actions of women themselves, motivated by their desires to break away from the limits imposed on their gender The nineteenth century was a critical point in time for women, in regards to their roles in society (“The Role of the Wife and Mother”). In The Awakening, Edna goes through noteworthy changes in the course of the novel, which reconstructs her into a woman who goes against societal ideals regarding motherhood and marriage . In the 1890s, motherhood was viewed

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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.

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