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History and feminism of kate chopin
The Role Of Women In Kate Chopins The Story Of An Hour
History and feminism of kate chopin
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“She wanted something to happen- something, anything: she did not know what”
(Chopin). In Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening, the reader is introduced to Edna Pontellier, a
passionate, rebellious woman. Throughout the novel, it becomes apparent how unsettled Edna
feels about her life. The reader can identify this by her thoughts, desires, and actions, which are
highly inappropriate for an affluent woman of the time. In the novel, Edna has an awakening
and finds the courage to make the changes she sees necessary. Kate Chopin is able to make
quality connections in order to symbolize her innermost desires. Chopin does this by providing
references to the sea, and the birds, and then using them to foreshadow Edna’s end of life
decision.
The sea is typically used in order to express strength, life/ death, and calmness. In The
Awakening, Kate Chopin uses the sea as a way to communicate Edna’s strength and
empowerment. Two references that examine this idea are made available: one for the
transformation of her body and one for the transformation of her mind. Edna’s learn-to-swim
experience transforms her body during her awakening. Overcoming her fears and learning to
swim is a significant experience because it shows how she is able to gain control over her body:
“The voice of the sea speaks to the soul” (Chopin). This is a powerful statement due to the fact
that it represents how Edna undergoes a dramatic change in character. She goes from listening
and acting upon the influences of society, to following her own mind and innermost desires.
These both play a large part in understanding Edna’s personal transformation from a quiet and
fearful girl to an empowered and independent woman.
Across many forms of art, birds ...
... middle of paper ...
...el progresses, an awakening can be observed. This
awakening greatly transforms Edna’s body and mind. Kate Chopin makes this evident by her
use of references to the sea, the birds, and the foreshadowing of Edna’s end of life decision.
These quality connections show the suffering, empowerment, and innermost desires of Edna
throughout the novel, The Awakening.
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: Herbert S. Stone and Co., 1899. Print.
Garrett Brown, Kimberly. “Dropping Hints and the Power of Foreshadowing in Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening.” Blogs Goddard. The Pitkin Review. Spring 2010. Web. 20 March 2015.
Mascarenhas, Cheryl. “Bird Symbolism and Their Meaning.” Buzzle. South University. 13 Feb. 2012. Web. 20 March 2015.
Shmoop Editorial Team. "Birds in The Awakening." Shmoop. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 20 March 2015.
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.
Kate Chopin uses characterization to help you understand the character of Edna on how she empowers and improves the quality of life. Edna becomes an independent women as a whole and enjoys her new found freedom. For example, Chopin uses the following quote to show you how she begins enjoying her new found freedom.”The race horse was a friend and intimate association of her
how quickly women succumb to their "roles", and how easily people can. be shaped to consider a different and all too meaningless set of morals. The sexy of the sexy. Edna is strategically alienated in the novella so as to be the
When her husband and children are gone, she moves out of the house and purses her own ambitions. She starts painting and feeling happier. “There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day” (Chopin 69). Her sacrifice greatly contributed to her disobedient actions. Since she wanted to be free from a societal rule of a mother-woman that she never wanted to be in, she emphasizes her need for expression of her own passions. Her needs reflect the meaning of the work and other women too. The character of Edna conveys that women are also people who have dreams and desires they want to accomplish and not be pinned down by a stereotype.
Chopin mentions birds in a subtle way at many points in the plot and if looked at closely enough they are always linked back to Edna and her journey of her awakening. In the first pages of the novella, Chopin reveals Madame Lebrun's "green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage" (Chopin 1). The caged bird at the beginning of the novella points out Edna's subconscious feeling of being entrapped as a woman in the ideal of a mother-woman in Creole society. The parrot "could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood" (1). The parrot's lack of a way to communicate because of the unknown language depicts Edna's inability to speak her true feelings and thoughts. It is for this reason that nobody understands her and what she is going through. A little further into the story, Madame Reisz plays a ballad on the piano. The name of which "was something else, but [Edna] called it Solitude.' When she heard it there came before her imagination the figure of a man standing on a desolate rock on the seashore His attitude was one of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight away from him" (25). The bird in the distance symbolizes Edna's desire of freedom and the man in the vision shows the longing for the freedom that is so far out of reach. At the end of the story, Chopin shows "a bird with a broken wing beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water" while Edna is swimming in the ocean at the Grand Isle shortly before she drowns (115). The bird stands for the inability to stray from the norms of society and become independent without inevitably falling from being incapable of doing everything by herself. The different birds all have different meanings for Edna but they all show the progression of her awakening.
... the novel. Ranging from clothes, to birds, to the “pigeon house”, each symbol and setting provides the reader with insight into Edna’s personality, thoughts, and awakening.
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.
As the novel starts out Edna is a housewife to her husband, Mr. Pontellier, and is not necessarily unhappy or depressed but knows something is missing. Her husband does not treat her well. "...looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage." She is nothing but a piece of property to him; he has no true feelings for her and wants her for the sole purpose of withholding his reputation. "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?" Mr. Pontellier constantly brings her down for his own satisfaction not caring at all how if affects Edna.
Kate Chopin's The Awakening tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother living in the upper crust of New Orleans in the 1890s. It depicts her journey as her standing shifts from one of entrapment to one of empowerment. As the story begins, Edna is blessed with wealth and the pleasure of an affluent lifestyle. She is a woman of leisure, excepting only in social obligations. This endowment, however, is hindered greatly by her gender.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 535-625. Print.
Central Lib. Fort Worth, TX -. 11 Feb. 2003 Dawson, Hugh J. & Co. "Kate Chopin's The Awakening: A Dissenting Opinion. " American Literary Realism 26.2 (1994):18.
...tionship she had until she was left with literally no reason to live. Throughout the novella, she breaks social conventions, which damages her reputation and her relationships with her friends, husband, and children. Through Edna’s thoughts and actions, numerous gender issues and expectations are displayed within The Awakening because she serves as a direct representation of feminist ideals, social changes, and a revolution to come.
In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, the principal character, Edna decides to kill herself rather than to live a lie. It seemed to Kate that the time of her own death was the only thing remaining under her control since society had already decided the rest of her life for her. Edna was a woman of the wrong times; she wanted her independence and she wanted to be with her lover, Robert. This type of behavior would never be accepted by the society of her time. Edna's relationship with Robert, and her rejection of the role dictated to her by society, resulted in her perceiving suicide to be the only solution to her problems.
During the summer of Edna's awakening, the sea's influence increases as she learns how to swim, an event which holds much more significance that her fellow vacationers realize. “To her friends, she has accomplished a simple feat; to Edna, she has accomplished a miracle” (Showalter 114). She has found a peace and tranquility in swimming which gives her the feeling of freedom. The narrator tells us that as she swims, "she seem[s] to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself" (Chopin 74). She sees the freedom t...
Bryfonski, Dedria, ed. Women's Issues in Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven, 2012. Print.