The Awakening by Kate Chopin was a very controversial novel back in the time it was written, but gradually became accepted and is now read across the world and accepted as one of the first feminist writings of literature. Its story follows the character Edna Pontellier and how she starts to become bold and act upon her own feelings. Edna is in a relationship with a husband whom she does not love. She is ‘awakened’ when she meets Robert Lebrun and gradually begins to fall in love with him. The two were obviously in love, so Robert, to hide the fact the he loves Edna, decides to run away to Mexico. Edna is devastated and spends all of her time thinking about Robert. To help with her pangs of desire, she leaves her husband’s home, sends the kids …show more content…
On the first page of the novel, a parrot and a mockingbird are introduced; the parrot represents Edna and the mockingbird represents Mademoiselle Reisz. What the parrot first says, “Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That’s all right!”(Chopin 1) is symbolic of Edna’s inner feelings toward her husband. The bird is shrieking at Mr. Pontellier, the man to whom Edna is in a loveless marriage with. Edna wants to get away from her husband, but because of her religious views, she cannot divorce her husband without feeling remorse and guilt. The description that follows the parrot’s dialogue, “He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mocking bird that hung on the other side of the door, whistling his fluty notes out upon the breeze with maddening persistence” (1) is referring to how only Mademoiselle Reisz is only able to understand what Edna is going through. The mockingbird is also described as being musical, just like Mademoiselle Reisz who plays the piano very well. The parrot is also known to be “hung in a cage outside the door” (1), it is also representative of how Edna feels in the relationship with Mr. Pontellier. She feels as though that she is locked in a cage without any escape until she meets Robert and discovers freedom. The caged bird is also representative of how women were in the Victorian Era and how their only role was to take care of …show more content…
Pontellier was seen very often smoking cigars in the beginning of the novel, but Robert is noted to be smoking saying that “[h]e smoked cigarettes because he could not afford cigars” (9) at the time, but later on in the end of the story when Edna and Robert are reunited after his long absence in Mexico, he is smoking cigars like crazy. Robert also voices his opinion and becomes man enough to say that he loves and wants to be with Edna. The smoking behavior that he develops leads him to be how traditional men of the Victorian man were, showing that he had finally become a fully-fledged