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Kate Chopin's The Awakening

891 Words4 Pages

Setting Grand Isle and New Orleans during the late 19th century Genre Tragedy - Edna doesn’t get a happy ending which makes this literary work a tragedy Historical Information The author, Kate Chopin, was born in 1850. Her father was Irish and her mother was french. Kate was bilingual, speaking both English and French. She grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. Kate’s family owned slaves during the civil war. Kate had a strong passion for music from a young age. She was very skeptical of religion. She had lost many family members. She married Oscar Chopin. Oscar was from New Orleans, Louisiana. They had five sons and a daughter together. Kate became a widow at age 32. She then died in 1904. Themes Individuality - Throughout the novel Edna becomes …show more content…

Women were believed to have to sole purpose of birthing and raising children. Edna was not a motherwoman. She did not enjoy the typical lifestyle of a housewife. Realism and Romanticism - Mr. Pontellier and Madame Ratignolle, who are preoccupied almost exclusively with the appearance of a comfortable home and a happy family exemplify realism. Edna and Mademoiselle Reisz, who seek out emotional and spiritual experience, exemplify romanticism. Freedom and Emptiness - Freedom, for Edna, is release from the binding rules and stereotypes of an upper class woman. Edna’s longing for the freedom to live her life happily the way she wants guides all of her decisions, emotions, and actions. Edna’s desire for freedom from her obligations to her husband and children is the root behind her obsession with the sea, a place of complete solitude and emptiness. Language - Shows class divisions / education. "One of these days," she said, "I'm going to pull myself together for a while and think--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 …show more content…

Edna’s husband who repeatedly goes out of town for long periods of time. He makes up for it by sending Edna and the children bonbons, a treat that Edna usually just hands out to friends. Throughout the novel, Edna struggles with depression based on her longing for freedom from her obligations to her husband and children. She is not truly happy living out the typical lifestyle of an upper class housewife in the late 19th century. She attempts to gain her freedom by pushing herself away from her husband and children, emotionally and literally. She starts seeing other men without even trying to hide it. She even moves out of her big home because she didn’t feel right about living in Leonces home that he bought when she doesn’t love him at all. After isolating herself she continues to be unhappy and feels very empty inside. These feelings of emptiness and freedom from societal norms lead to her suicide at the end of the

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Edna considers Mademoiselle Reisz to be a true artist and wishes to mold her newly-awakened life away from societal norms, just as Mademoiselle Reisz did. Mademoiselle Ratignolle is a foil to Mademoiselle Reisz; she is a dutiful housewife who represents Edna’s lifestyle before her awakening, a lifestyle she is eager to shed. Both women play piano for Edna. However, Edna is emotionally connected to Mademoiselle

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1269 Words | 6 Pages

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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757 Words | 4 Pages

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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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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1386 Words | 6 Pages

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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1283 Words | 6 Pages

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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1171 Words | 5 Pages

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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149 Words | 1 Pages

Kate Chopin uses Adele as an example to show how Creole wifes' should act towards their husbands’ and children because Edna does not treat her husband or her kids how a Creole wife should. Adele and Edna are different in a lot of ways because Adele is part of the Creoles lifestyle, because she constantly worries about her children and is a what a “Creole wife” should be. Edna is not part of the Creole lifestyle, she never really worries about her children at all, she also is not what the “Creole wife” should be to her husband and kids. Kate also uses these key facts to show Edna's life, and how she is starting to notice that she is not really happy where she is now and that she needs to change her life. This may lead her to become more independent

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1234 Words | 5 Pages

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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925 Words | 4 Pages

In the 1800’s, the societal niche of married women was clearly defined: they were meant to devote every aspect of their lives to their husbands and children. Edna Pontellier, the protagonist in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, struggles to adhere to these standards, and eventually rebels against them. The harsh standards placed on Edna and other women in the novel are like the cages around the metaphorical birds Chopin uses to represent them. Edna's unhappiness in her societal role is realized in the ocean, which symbolizes this awakening and her attempt to escape the gender roles of the nineteenth century.

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697 Words | 3 Pages

After battling the feelings inside of her, Edna finally rid herself of all outside expectations. She no longer took care of the children, nor did she wait for her husband. Robert returned, but the standards of society kept them apart as well. In New Orleans, everything wonderful that Edna possessed at the beginning of the book spiraled down until she was broken. She ran away to Grand Isle, by herself, and waded deep into the cold ocean.

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626 Words | 3 Pages

“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 151). As she realized the extent of the strain her children would put on her identity, Edna determined that she would never let her children take her life while she would still live. As she reflects on this notion, swimming into the ocean, she reviews her half-hearted relationship with her husband, and all of the other men she had fancied throughout her years, realizing the absurdity of the cycle she trapped herself in. Her obsession with the sea allowed for her to be free at last.

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1315 Words | 6 Pages

In the late 1800s, nearly all women were viewed as subservient, inferior, second class females that lived their lives in a patriarchal and chauvinist society. Women often had no voice, identity, or independence during that time period. Moreover, women dealt with the horrors of social norms and the gender opposition of societal norms. The primary focus and obligation for a woman to obtain during the 1800s was to serve her husband and to obey to anything he said. Since women were not getting the equality, freedom, or independence that they desired, Kate Chopin, an independent-minded female American novelist of the late 1800s expressed the horrors, oppressions, sadness, and oppositions that women of that time period went through.

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1116 Words | 5 Pages

Here, the reader is able to see that this is a plain description of her, as opposed to that of Adéle. In chapter four, it is also plainly stated that Edna is not a “mother-woman.” This is supported by what she thinks about her family and marriage. In chapter seven, the narrator explains how Edna truly feels towards her children. According to the text, “She would sometimes gather them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes forget them…

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919 Words | 4 Pages

At the beginning of the novel, Edna had appeared to be recognizing the fact that her life revolves around her husband and her children, and that it is her main duty to care for them. It is mainly Mr. Pontellier, her husband, who tries to establish an image of her being a both a perfect partner and wife. He views her as an object that must be suitable for the eyes of society. According to him, his wife is a “valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage” (Chopin 2). He is controlling over her appearance and actions.

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