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Literary research essay on kate chopin the storm and its gender criticism
Meaning of the Awakening by Kate Chopin
Meaning of the Awakening by Kate Chopin
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Edna Pontellier, the protagonist of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) who would not allow anyone to possess her, is an example of how the cult of domesticity, prevalent in the nineteenth century, oppressed women as passionless mothers who worship their husbands. While Edna isolates herself from her husband, Leonce, she also isolates herself from her children and, thus, from motherhood. However, Chopin utilizes the motherhood metaphor to illustrate Edna’s own rebirth as she awakens throughout the novel. Exploring Chopin’s tale through feminist literary theory and the cult of domesticity, the metaphor of motherhood through Edna’s own maternity as well as her metaphorical rebirth becomes apparent.
Lois Tyson’s text, Critical Theory Today (2006), explains the various theories that are utilized to critique literature and explain plots, themes, and characters. With feminist literary theory, Tyson writes, “Broadly defined, feminist criticism examines the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforces or undermines the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women” (83). With Edna Pontellier, her place in the story relies on her husband’s social status; her husband, Leonce Pontellier, is a successful businessman in New Orleans and wants to maintain appearances of success and marital stability. With Leonce, a product of society, he sees and treats Edna as an object: “‘You are burnt beyond recognition,’ he added, looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage” (Chopin 44).
Leonce then demonstrates patriarchy in The Awakening, an aspect of culture that portrays the intellectual, physical, social, and psychological dominance of men over women...
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...rning her children and her lacking maternity, it seems unlikely that she will “remember the children” and allow herself to fulfill the role of mother when mothering her children will possess and consume her.
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. “The Awakening.” 1899. The Awakening and Selected Stories. New York City, NY: Penguin Group, 2003.
Killeen, Jarlath. “Mother and Child: Realism, Maternity, and Catholicism in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.” Religion and the Arts (Dec 2003): 7. 413-38.
Lavender, Catherine. “The Cult of Domesticity and True Womanhood.” True Womanhood. 4 Nov 2008 .
Schweitzer, Ivy. “Maternal Discourse and the Romance of Self-Possession in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.” Boundary 2 (Spring 1990): 17. 158-86.
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today. 2nd ed. New York City, NY: Routledge, 2006.
Chopin, Kate. "The Awakening." The Norton Anthology of American Literature.. Gen. ed. Nina Baym. 8th ed. Vol. C. New York: Norton, 2012. 561-652. Print.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening and Selected Short Stories of Kate Chopin. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
When Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" was published at the end of the 19th Century, many reviewers took issue with what they perceived to be the author's defiance of Victorian proprieties, but it is this very defiance with which has been responsible for the revival in the interest of the novel today. This factor is borne out by Chopin's own words throughout her Preface -- where she indicates that women were not recipients of equal treatment. (Chopin, Preface ) Edna takes her own life at the book's end, not because of remorse over having committed adultery but because she can no longer struggle against the social conventions which deny her fulfillment as a person and as a woman. Like Kate Chopin herself, Edna is an artist and a woman of sensitivity who believes that her identity as a woman involves more than being a wife and mother. It is this very type of independent thinking which was viewed as heretical in a society which sought to deny women any meaningful participation.
Sacrifices can define one’s character; it can either be the highest dignity or the lowest degradation of the value of one’s life. In The Awakening, Kate Chopin implicitly conveys the sacrifice Edna Pontellier makes in the life which provides insight of her character and attributions to her “awakening.” She sacrificed her past of a lively and youthful life and compressed it to a domestic and reserved lifestyle of housewife picturesque. However, she meets multiple acquaintances who help her express her dreams and true identity. Mrs. Pontellier’s sacrifice established her awakening to be defiant and drift away from the societal role of an obedient mother, as well as, highlighting the difference between society’s expectations of women and women’s
In “Tradition and the Female Talent: The Awakening as a Solitary Book,” Elaine Showalter makes a compelling argument that “Edna Pontellier’s ‘unfocused yearning’ for an autonomous life is akin to Kate Chopin’s yearning to write works that go beyond female plots and feminine endings” (204). Urging her reader to read The Awakening “in the context of literary tradition,” Showalter demonstrates the ways in which Chopin’s novel both builds upon and departs from the tradition of American women’s writing up to that point. Showalter begins with the antebellum novelists’ themes of women’s roles as mothers—especially the importance of the mother-daughter relationship—and women’s attachments with one another and then moves to the local colorists of the post-Civil War who claimed male and female models but who wrote that motherhood was not a suitable partner for the true artist. According to these women writers, a woman had to choose to be either an artist or a wife and mother; one negatively affected the other. The literary history then delves...
Elizabeth Fox Genovese of Emory University shared in a PBS interview that “She [Kate Chopin] was very important as one of the earliest examples of modernism in the United States or, if you wish, the cutting edge of modernism in American literature” (PBS – Interviews). Kate Chopin published At Fault, her first novel, in 1890 and The Awakening, her last novel, in 1898 (Guilds 924). During these years Chopin wrote numerous other works and most, like At Fault and The Awakening, centered around upper-middle class Creole or French women involved in womanly uncertainties; such as, extramarital affairs, acceptable behavior in society for females, duties as a wife, responsibilities as a mother, and religious beliefs. Chopin was an extraordinary woman, and no indication was made, during the investigation of this research paper, reflecting her having regrets regarding her position as a wife or mother. This document is an attempt at comparing the issues the main characters experienced and presenting Chopin’s unique skill in writing about the culture she observed during her years of living in Louisiana. The tragedy of this author’s existence is that during her life the literary world did not recognize such exceptional skill.
Works Cited Franklin, R. F. "The Awakening and the Failure of the Psyche. " American Literature 56 (Summer 1984): 510-526. Platizky, R. "Chopin's Awakening. " Explicator 53 (Winter 1995): 99-102. Seyersted, P. Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography.
Works Cited Chopin, Kate. A. The Awakening. New York: Avon, 1972. Print.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. A Norton Critical Edition: Kate Chopin: The Awakening. Ed. Margo Culley. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994. 3-109.
The biological differences that set apart the male and female gender throughout any culture remain eminent. Men are perceived as the stronger and dominant gender; women play the role of the weaker. In each culture the expectation of the manner in which men and women behave are influenced by the ideals and customs of that culture. In most predominant cultures, the man undertakes the role as a leader, and the woman devotes her life to the husband. Throughout history, traditions and literature provide a template to the identities of various cultures. Sleeping Beauty’s classic tale of a beautiful princess takes a central precept that previous patriarchal archetypes dominated during the 17th Century. The archetypal perceptions of women resulted from conscious and unconscious literature influenced by male-dominated perspectives and social standards.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 535-625. Print.
Dawson, Hugh J. "Kate Chopin's The Awakening: A Dissenting Opinion." American Literary Realism 26.2 (1994):1 18.
Critics of Kate Chopin's The Awakening tend to read the novel as the dramatization of a woman's struggle to achieve selfhood--a struggle doomed failure either because the patriarchal conventions of her society restrict freedom, or because the ideal of selfhood that she pursue is a masculine defined one that allows for none of the physical and undeniable claims which maternity makes upon women. Ultimately. in both views, Edna Pontellier ends her life because she cannot have it both ways: given her time, place, and notion of self, she cannot be a mother and have a self. (Simons)
Chopin, Kate. "Desiree's Baby." The Awakening and Other Stories. Ed. Judith Baxter. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.
Bryfonski, Dedria, ed. Women's Issues in Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven, 2012. Print.