The Journey Of Edna Pontellier In The Awakening

The Journey of Edna Pontellier in The Awakening

The suffragist Susan B Anthony describes “Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” showing womens restrictions in the 19th century. Demonstrating how men had rights such as the right to vote and the right to own property, contrary to women not having any of those rights. In Kate Chopin's realism novel The Awakening she uses motifs to show her main character Edna and her discovery of independence from society in contrast to her restraint on life. First, The motif of art and music best represents Edna’s freedom and independence because it takes her away from the sad reality that she has to live day to day. Second, The motif of birds best represents Edna’s confinement

Firstly, Edna listens to Mademoiselle Reisz and her piece named “Solitude” at a gathering. While Edna was listening to the piece “a tremor” was sent down and all throughout her “spinal column” (Chopin 28). The music that Edna hears transports her out of her reality, surprising her with a new feeling of something that finally makes her happy. Secondly, Edna releases her emotions while Victor starts to sing a song for her called “Si tu savais”. Listening to Victor, Edna cried “Don’t sing that. I don’t want you to sing it” showing her expressing emotions (Chopin 92). Edna has finally come out of her restrictions and used her emotions to show that she is finally free from her old ways. Lastly, Edna starts to discover her love for painting and how this affects her happiness. She changed the household into a “service of art” filled with models and palettes (Chopin 59). Art makes Edna feel a sense of freedom, a way for her to control what she wants to put on that canvas is a way for her to express her independence from the rest of the world. Overall, Chopin uses art and music to show Edna starting to gain her independence from the world that she dreads living

To start, moments before Edna's last breaths, a hurt bird flies over her. While Edna was standing on the beach before her death, there was “a bird with a broken wing” flying above her in the sky (Chopin 116). The bird above her shows us readers how even until the end of her life she was broken and will always be broken due to the situations that she is involved in. Next, during a party the parrot is silenced and put into the other room due to being too loud. Everyone was getting annoyed with the bird, so they all agreed to have “the bird removed and consigned to the regions of darkness” (Chopin 26). The action of the bird being removed from the room represents how Edna is being denied her rights and was told to keep silent even in times of need. Last, the parrot being trapped inside a cage outside the room, away from all of them. Chopin describes the colored parrot and how it “hung in a cage outside the door” (Chopin 1).Since the bird is away from society, it shows us how women are always having their rights and their communication taken away from them. In conclusion, the motif of birds throughout the novel shows us that Edna is constantly struggling with her rights and with her independence as a woman