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Edna Pontellier's Mother In The Awakening

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A mother’s job is to love her children and put them above everything. Edna Pontellier is a married woman who is not content being a wife and mother. Over the course of a summer, Edna begins to discover just how discontent she is and begins to act selfishly, ignoring her children’s emotional and physical needs. Instead, she prioritizes her own desires in her pursuit of independence rather than those of her children. In The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, Edna Pontellier is a poor mother to her children.
Edna Pontiller should have never become a mother because she lacks maternal instincts. Mothers are meant to take care of their children's emotional and physical needs. Mr. Pontiller is aware that Edna is not a typical mother and confronts her about …show more content…

Edna develops an infatuation for a man named Robert. She leaves her children and goes away with him for the day without telling anyone. It makes her feel as if she “freed her soul of responsibility” (Chopin 43). Edna demonstrates a lack of commitment to her children and husband, preferring to spend the day with a man she is not married to rather than her own family. She disregards the emotional well-being of her kids so she can pursue her love interest without their interference. As summer comes to a close, Edna decides to move out of the family home. She sends her boys to stay with her mother-in-law. After visiting them, Edna “[breathes] a big, genuine sigh of relief” because she is once again without them (Choin 97). She enjoyed spending a short time with her children but forgets about them shortly after leaving. She finds it easier to be distant and detached rather than engaged with her boys. As Edna returns to her new home, she feels free and happy because she can focus on her own interests without having her children under foot. Unfortunately for Edna, her personal life did not work out the way she planned. She chooses to end her life rather than return to her children knowing that this way “they could [not] possess her body and soul” (Chopin 156). For Edna, downing herself is the only way she is going to have the freedom she wants. She believes her children are a burden to her because

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The Awakening Promt #5 I think that Edna’s suicide was due more to her failure to escape from what she was supposed to do as a mother and a housewife, especially when she lost Robert, than giving up and giving herself to the sea. There were many times where she has neglected to be a good mother to her children and a good housewife. Just as in chapter three page 5, she doesn’t even notice or seem to care that her child has a fever. In chapter seven page 18, she would sometimes forget her children and she even felt their absence as a relief.

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Edna is not a motherly woman because she never puts her children as her first priority. Edna sends her children to their grandmother’s house to get some

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We had the authors of The New Housekeeper’s Manual explain how a mother should act. They explained that, “She has a husband, to whose peculiar tastes and habits she must accommodate herself; she has children whose health she must guard, whose physical constitutions she must study and develop, whose temper and habits she must regulate, whose principles she must form, whose pursuits she must guide” (Beecher 221). Edna clearly does not follow this principle. Mr. Pontellier stated that, “He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother's place to look after children, whose on earth was it?"

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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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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).

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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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(Chopin 49) As the quote recited, her kids were the first attempt on trying to fill the void within her. She tried to love them as much as she could but at the end of the day, she realized that this was not who she was and was not what she wanted. Which is why Edna would sometimes forget that her kids even existed. Wether or not she loved and cared for her kids was an ongoing battle within her, the house was an indispensable reminder of the societal norms.

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Moreover, when her children tumbled, she will not pick them up just let them get up on their own. In contrast to Adele, Edna is not contributing herself to her family as well as Adele. Edna tries to fit in as the role to be a good mother, but, she cannot definitely, to be a mother-woman cannot fulfill her eagerness to be a special, independent and egocentric person. In Chapter XVI, Edna said to Adele, she would give her money and her life to children, but never herself. And that is what she is trying to understand and recognize.

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Edna broke free from the mold of her society. She was trying to find her purpose and her worth in a world where she did not have many rights or individual stability. Edna Pontellier worked to disregard the influence and power of men and society as a whole to discover more about herself and what she really wanted out of life (Bommarito). She gave up the “unessential” such as her home, possessions, and reputation to do things for

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Edna is struggling to choose a identity between a mother, wife, lover etc. She seems to not want to be subject as the possession of anybody. She focuses on independence even denying Robert of her love towards him which if she chose to stay with him, she would be associated with him and therefore labeled. She looks up to Madame Reisz as an independent woman, pursuing her passions and doing as she pleases. "I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn 't give

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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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For example, when the couple returns from Grand Isle, Edna begins to act on her own and refuses to show hospitality towards her guests and it begins to exasperate Mr. Pontellier. As the novel progresses, it is evident that the relationship between Mr. Pontellier and Edna is purely superficial; it lacks sentiment and is only picture perfect for society. Because Edna is portrayed as an object of her husband, it fits the the fact that marriages in the nineteenth century viewed women as an “object of others [rather than] the free subject of their own fates”

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Edna Pontellier’s attitude toward motherhood is that she is not a perfect mother-women for many ways. Edna Pontellier is not a perfect mother because “Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-women”(Chopin, 10). This quote means that Edna Pontellier is not a good mother/wife because she is not that of a women who would worship their children ,and their husband. Edna Pontellier is not a good mother because “I would give up the

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