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Kate chopins the awakening and edna and her desires
Kate chopins the awakening and edna and her desires
Kate chopins the awakening and edna and her desires
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Whether it be a person, technology, or environment, the question of how things persuade a character to behave always arises. In Nancy Walker's critique entitled [Feminist of Naturalist], Walker states that Edna's downward spiraling life is caused by her inability to free herself from her Creole culture. Although it is true that the novel appears to embrace this idea, there are a multitude of moments where Chopin allows Edna to appear as a character who makes decisions for herself. In doing this, Chopin effectively illustrates a flaw in Walkers theory on Creole culture and naturalism, and reveals Edna's awkward and uncomfortable feelings towards a culture said to immense her. By doing this, Chopin reveals a humans ability to fight against nature, thus making their own choices and destinies.
Chopin depiction of Edna uneasy feelings about the Creole culture that surrounds her is seen towards the end of the novel, as Mrs. Ratingolle delivers her child. Mrs. Ratingolle, one of the few close friends that Edna has, asks Edna to remain with her as she delivers her baby. As Edna stands she, realizes that her own experience of child birthing, “seemed far away, unreal, and only half remembered(Chopin 104)”. This is in contrast with Walker's argument that, “Chopin has caused Edna to be hypnotized by the sensuous Creoles, by the warmth and color of Grand Isle(255)”. Though the word “unreal” suggest a hypnotized state of mind for Edna, almost like a dream, it also suggest a detachment from the scene itself. In stating that child birth for Edna seemed “far away”, and “half remembered”, Chopin depicts an attachment between the tradition and Edna. It is another moment where Edna appears to reject the Creole culture, by pushing it away, put...
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...rom letting her emotions show causing her to do something drastic. Chopin again contradict Walker, illustrating that Creole culture has not taken over Edna's mind, but instead allowed her the ability to revolt against it.
In conclusion, while there are instances in the novel that do suggest Edna's enthrallment in Creole culture, Walker neglected to looks at other instances where Edna shows resistance against it. Chopin suggest that although there are a multitude of things that can effect a person decisions, a person in the end makes the decision consciously, and based on their own wants and desires. Regardless of whether Edna would have lived or dies, nothing would have change. Edna was not immersed in her culture, in fact she rejected it, and just like she did, perhaps others can reject the influences around them.
Even at the end, the reader is still left with the question of whether Edna has truly found a setting in which she can finally be herself. Many readers would argue that Edna finds this niche in her seaside vacation home on Grand Isle. To Edna, the sea is a wide expanse of opportunity and liberation from the constricting socialite world of French Quarter New Orleans. Chopin's lavish descriptions of the sea give us an insight into its powerful effect on Edna: The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whis... ...
In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier’s suicide is an assertion of her independence and contributes to Chopin’s message that to be independent one must choose between personal desires and societal expectations. Chopin conveys this message through Edna’s reasons for committing suicide and how doing so leads her to total independence. Unlike the other women of Victorian society, Edna is unwilling to suppress her personal identity and desires for the benefit of her family. She begins “to realize her position in the universe as a human being and to recognize her relationship as an individual to the world within and about her” (35).
Chopin’s Impromptu arouses "the very passions ... within [Edna’s] soul"(p.34). The harmony, fluidity, subtle rhythm and poetic beauty of the Romantic composer make Edna loose herself in the music that stirs her emotions. The art completes, for her, what nature cannot bring to a finish. The exquisite, looping, and often fiery melodies of the Impromptu make a cut in Edna’s mind through the conventional beliefs about people and society. Because she is not a musician, her listening is based on intuition, allowing for a direct apprehension of the music by the soul and leading to a confrontation with the reality itself — the reality of "solitude, of hope, of longing, ... of despair"(p.34). This is the beginning of Edna’s awakening, for such emotions, especially despair, are not an end but a beginning because they take away the excuses and guilts, those toward herself, from which she suffers. This revelation of previously hidden conflicts gives birth to dramatic emotions within Edna. It is so powerful that Edna wonders if she "shall ever be stirred again as...Reisz’s playing moved" her that night (p.38).
Essentially, Edna is not able to fulfill any of the roles that are presented by Chopin in the novel: mother, sister, daughter, wife, friend, artist, lover to either man, and finally the traditional role of a woman in society. She does not quite fit into any niche, and thus her suicide at the end of the novel is the only way for Edna’s story to end. Chopin must have Edna die, as she cannot survive in this restrained society in which she does not belong to. The idea of giving yourself completely to serve another, Edna declares “that she would never sacrifice herself for her children, or for any one” (47). However, her awakening is also a realization of her underprivileged position in a male dominated society. The first sign that Edna is becoming comfortable with herself, and beginning to loosen the constrictions of not being an individual is when she asks Robert, her husband, to retrieve her shawl: "When he returned with the shawl she took it and kept it in her hand. She did not put it around her" (30). Edna is trying to establish herself as an artist in a society where there is no tradition of women as creative beings. For any woman to suggest a desire for a role outside the domestic sphere, as more than a mother or housewife, was perceived as
Her transformation and journey to self-discovery truly begins on the family’s annual summer stay at Grand Isle. “At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life- that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions. That summer at Grand Isle she began to loosen a little of the mantle of reserve that had always enveloped her” (Chopin 26). From that point onward, Edna gains a deeper sense of desire for self-awareness and the benefits that come from such an odyssey. She suddenly feels trapped in her marriage, without being in a passionately romantic relationship, but rather a contractual marriage. Edna questions her ongoing relationship with Leonce; she ponders what the underlying cause of her marriage was to begin with; a forbidden romance, an act of rebellion against her father, or a genuine attraction of love and not lust? While Edna internally questions, she begins to entertain thoughts of other men in her life, eventually leading to sensuous feelings and thoughts related to sexual fantasy imagined through a relationship with Robert Lebrun. Concurrently, Edna wavers the ideas so clearly expected by the society- she analyzes and examines; why must women assimilate to rigid societal standards while men have no such
She begins by becoming “passionately enamored of a dignified and sad-eyed cavalry officer;” then “her affections were deeply engaged by a young gentleman who visited a lady on a neighboring plantation;” and finally, “the face and figure of a great tragedian began to haunt her imagination and stir her senses” (39). All of these figures are unattainable and, therefore, leave her discontented, yet she feels desire for them and so she feels passion, which to her is better than numbness. Chopin indicates that she needs something exciting, something beyond the ordinary routine of life. Edna wants to be “passionately enamored,” and have her affections “deeply engaged.”
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
She desperately wanted a voice and independence. Edna’s realization of her situation occurred progressively. It was a journey in which she slowly discovered what she was lacking emotionally. Edna’s first major disappointment in the novel was after her husband, Leonce Pontellier, lashed out at her and criticized her as a mother after she insisted her child was not sick. This sparked a realization in Edna that made here realize she was unhappy with her marriage. This was a triggering event in her self discovery. This event sparked a change in her behavior. She began disobeying her husband and she began interacting inappropriately with for a married woman. Edna increasingly flirted with Robert LeBrun and almost instantly became attracted to him. These feelings only grew with each interaction. Moreover, when it was revealed to Edna that Robert would be leaving for Mexico she was deeply hurt not only because he didn’t tell her, but she was also losing his company. Although Edna’s and Robert’s relationship may have only appeared as friendship to others, they both secretly desired a romantic relationship. Edna was not sure why she was feeling the way she was “She could only realize that she herself-her present self-was in some way different from the other self. That she was seeing with different eyes and making the acquaintance of new conditions in herself that colored
The fact that Edna is an artist is significant, insofar as it allows her to have a sensibility as developed as the author's. Furthermore, Edna is able to find in Mlle. Reisz, who has established herself as a musician, a role model who inspires her in her efforts at independence. Mlle. Reisz, in confiding to Edna that "You are the only one worth playing for," gives evidence of the common bond which the two of them feel as women whose sensibilities are significantly different from those of the common herd. The French heritage which Edna absorbed through her Creole upbringing allowed her, like Kate Chopin herself, to have knowledge or a way of life that represented a challenge to dominant Victorian conventions.
Another aspects of the story is that once Edna’s awakening begins to take place, she is on a roller coaster of emotions, from the manic exuberance of listening to music and the sounds of the water, her connection to robert--it’s as though all her senses are opened up. Between times, however, she is really depressed, as though all the color that Chopin imparts so beautifully in the descriptions of the other scenes, has become dull and uninteresting. Then, she is flung into an emotional upheaval when she reads Robert’s letter to Mlle Reisz, as the latter plays Wagner. Clearly, these kinds of emotions cannot be borne by a woman whose cultural structure does not admit the building of her own that it might sustain the weight and number. She is overwhelmed. She must escape, and she does, for her situation now is powerfully reminiscent of the “joy that kills” in “Hour.”
In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, the main character, Edna leaves her husband to find place in the world. Edna believes her new sexually independent power will make her master of her own life. But, as Martin points out, she has overestimated her strength and is still hampered by her "limited ability to direct her energy and to master her emotions" (22). Unfortunately, Edna has been educated too much in the traditions of society and not enough in reason and independent survival, admitting to Robert that "we women learn so little of life on the whole" (990). She has internalized society's conception of woman as guided by her emotions and not her mind and, therefore, in the search for another man to fill the void of love in her life, lets her goal become clouded instead of learning to depend on herself alone. Edna wants to overcome gender stereotypes, and is already using behaviours such as assertiveness and independence to question them, but the struggle is new to her and she fails to discover a method that would allow her to successfully leave behind society's preconceptions. Martin writes,
In the end, her internal conflict tears her apart and, to escape the feeling of entrapment, she drowns herself. Edna’s internal journey reflects the struggles of women during the Victorian era, as well as the meaning of the novella as a whole. Gender roles of the time confined women to living as married housewives with children. These limitations and expectations were a seemingly pressing issue for Chopin and other women of her time. Edna’s journey also highlights the importance of finding oneself apart from their duties.
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.
The setting Edna is in directly affects her temperament and awakening: Grand Isle provides her with a sense of freedom; New Orleans, restriction; the “pigeon house”, relief from social constraints. While at Grand Isle, Edna feels more freedom than she does at her conventional home in New Orleans. Instead of “Mrs. Pontellier… remaining in the drawing room the entire afternoon receiving visitors” (Chopin 84), Edna has the freedom to wander and spend time with Robert, rather than being restricted to staying at home while she is at Grand Isle. While sailing across the bay to the Cheniere Caminada, “Edna felt as if she were being borne away from some anchorage which had held her fast, whos chains had been looseining – had snapped the night before” (Chopin 58). The Cheniere Caminada at Grand Isle gives Edna an outlet from the social constraints she is under at home and at the cottage at Grand Isle. As Edna is sailing away she can feel the “anchorage” fall away: the social oppression, the gender roles, and the monotonous life all disappear; the same feeling and sense of awakening she gets when she sleeps for “one hundred years” (Chopin 63). New Orleans brings Edna back into reality – oppression, society, and depression clouds her mind as she is living a life she doesn’t want to live. New Orleans is the bastion of social rules, of realis...
Chopin carefully establishes that Edna does not neglect her children, but only her mother-woman image. Chopin illustrates the idea by telling the reader, "...Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman" (689). Edna tries to explain to Adele how she feels about her children and how she feels about herself, which greatly differs from the mother-woman image. She says, "I would give up the unessential; I would give my money; I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me" (720).