Birth in Kate Chopin's The Awakening
Birth, whether of children or desires, plays a strong motif throughout The Awakening. The four components of childbirth, which Edna—the novel’s main character—recalls as she witnesses her friend Madame Ratignolle give birth, represent major themes Chopin emphasizes throughout her novel. These four components are “ecstasy of pain, the heavy odor of chloroform, a stupor which had deadened sensation, and an awakening to find a little new life” (133). In childbirth, the first three components are necessary to achieve the fourth: the awakening to find a new life. The same is true of Edna’s thematic self-discovery, only the sequence is slightly reordered. It begins instead with chloroform but ends the
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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.” She loves to have her “senses stirred,” and her imaginative desires enact these sensations for her when the objects of the desires themselves cannot.
Consequently, Edna realizes early in her own life that she is not satisfied with her role as a mother enslaved to humdrum domestic life with a husband to match. However, she does not consciously realize and choose to pursue her own desire for an exciting, passionate, courageous lover until after the novel opens upon one summer vacation at Grand Isle. Discovering her own desires is the awakening implied by the fourth thematic condition of childbirth, or “the awakening to find a little new life”
Additionally, Edna’s sacrifice helped her established an identity for herself. “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 which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me” (Chopin 57). She realizes how much she valued herself and how she would handle herself. As well as, this emphasizes on the meaning of The Awakening, of how women are able to define themselves as something more than a
The main question Chopin ponders in this novel is can a woman have both a marriage and children while fulfilling an independent life. Although the ending is not a very happy one, it shows the process of a woman struggling for self-survival. The Awakening shows Edna at the mercy of a devoted husband, a hot climate, a Creole lifestyle, and the restricted expectations of a particular class of Louisiana women.
Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” is wrought with symbolism, foreshadowing and careful diction choices. Many of the passages throughout the novel embody Edna’s awakening sense of self-reliance, independence and sexuality. These are sy...
Throughout Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier, the main protagonist, experiences multiple awakenings—the process in which Edna becomes aware of her life and the constraints place on it—through her struggles with interior emotional issues regarding her true identity: the confines of marriage vs. her yearning for intense passion and true love. As Edna begins to experience these awakenings she becomes enlightened of who she truly and of what she wants. As a result, Edna breaks away from what society deems acceptable and becomes awakened to the flaws of the many rules and expected behavior that are considered norms of the time. One could argue that Kate Chopin’s purpose in writing about Edna’s inner struggles and enlightenment was to
Edna Pontellier, the protagonist in the novel The Awakening by Kate Chopin, is followed by the audience through her voyage of self-realization. As Edna’s journey unfolds, Chopin incorporates a vast variety of symbols in order to express Edna’s relationship with society. One of the most present symbols that Chopin uses is the way she addresses Edna’s clothing or its absence. As Edna’s character develops and her desire to liberate herself swells, she removes clothing that she feels are not only constricting to her body physically but to her soul emotionally. While Edna removes her clothing throughout the novel, she is contravening the social norms and rules that the society she lives in has presented to her. This is one of many ways that Edna
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)
The possibility of a life beyond the scope of motherhood, social custom, standards of femininity, and wifedom characterize Kate Chopin’s vision of her heroine’s awakening, but Edna’s personal growth remains stifled by her inability to reconcile the contradictory impulses pulling her in different directions. Edna clearly envisions herself somewhere between mother-goddess figure Adele Ratignolle and the artist-spinster Mademoiselle Reisz, yet can not seem to negotiate a space that affords the luxury of love unspoiled by self-sacrifice and obligation. Edna’s “soul” surfaces when she allows herself to act on impulse over duty, but as Chopin’s words reveal, Mrs. Pontellier blindly fol...
The purpose of chapter three is to detail the relationship between a man and wife and to show what causes Edna’s “awakening”, which Chopin achieves through her stylistic techniques which include diction, rhetorical questions, and imagery.
Wolff empowers this claim throughout her criticism, and leads the reader with the idea that “once released, the inner being cannot be satisfied. It is an orally destructive self, a limitless void whose needs can be filled … only by total fusion with the outside world” (Wolff 235). From the beginning of The Awakening, Edna’s need for fulfillment and satisfaction is apparent to readers, through her displeasure towards her husband, Leonce, and her longing for Robert, a far-fetched lover. Though Edna is clearly yearning for this sense of fulfillment, “she is not willing to define her position in the world because to do so would involve relinquishing the dream of total fulfillment” (236). The idea of fullness to Edna is more worthy when not achieved; it provides her with a goal, or something to strive towards. Without this chase, she would have no purpose to remain living in the physical world, though she herself cannot understand this yet. Edna comes to this realization through the birthing of Adele’s child, which pulls her away from yet another unfulfilled part of her existence; Robert. Edna responds to this realization by performing a “literal denial and reversal of the birth trauma she has just witnessed, a stripping away of adulthood, of limitation, of consciousness itself” (241). In the act of suicide, Edna finds her complete and total state of fullness and bliss, which she could not seem to find with her children or Robert Lebrun. Even though Edna truly desires all of these additions in her life, it could never be enough for her to actually receive them all and to live in bliss. Wolff artistically prevails this insight into Edna’s character and provides the readers with an explanation to her rash decision of
In America, the 1890s were a decade of tension and social change. A central theme in Kate Chopin’s fiction was the independence of women. In Louisiana, most women were their husband’s property. The codes of Napoleon were still governing the matrimonial contract. Since Louisiana was a Catholic state, divorce was rare and scandalous. In any case, Edna Pontellier of Chopin had no legal rights for divorce, even though Léonce undoubtedly did. When Chopin gave life to a hero that tested freedom’s limits, she touched a nerve of the politic body. However, not Edna’s love, nor her artistic inner world, sex, or friendship can reconcile her personal growth, her creativity, her own sense of self and her expectations. It is a very particular academic fashion that has had Edna transformed into some sort of a feminist heroine. If she could have seen that her awakening in fact was a passion for Edna herself, then perhaps her suicide would have been avoided. Everyone was forced to observe, including the cynics that only because a young
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.
Kate Chopin is quite witty when choosing titles for her short stories and a novel, just like The Storm indicated some natural, unavoidable passion, in her novel The Awakening we have sexual awakening of the main protagonist Mrs. Edna Pontellier. Chopin kept it simple and classy yet deep tones given to titles are more than present. Chopin portrayed Edna in most honest way and not fearing that by giving her character sexual, emotional and intellectual freedom, Chopin was damaging a social picture of herself, since people were not very forgiving for daring Chopin, they try to harm her career and reputation. Edna Pontellier is a young woman in her late twenties who didn’t let her role of a wife and a mother rule over her personality.
During the late nineteenth century, the time of protagonist Edna Pontellier, a woman's place in society was confined to worshipping her children and submitting to her husband. Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, encompasses the frustrations and the triumphs in a woman's life as she attempts to cope with these strict cultural demands. Defying the stereotype of a "mother-woman," Edna battles the pressures of 1899 that command her to be a subdued and devoted housewife. Although Edna's ultimate suicide is a waste of her struggles against an oppressive society, The Awakening supports and encourages feminism as a way for women to obtain sexual freedom, financial independence, and individual identity.
Ranging from caged parrots to the meadow in Kentucky, symbols and settings in The Awakening are prominent and provide a deeper meaning than the text does alone. Throughout The Awakening by Kate Chopin, symbols and setting recur representing Edna’s current progress in her awakening. The reader can interpret these and see a timeline of Edna’s changes and turmoil as she undergoes her changes and awakening.
In Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening, a young mother, Edna Pontellier, breaks from her mundane life of obligations and begins to experience life with a new perspective. In doing this, Edna neglects her family. Adele Ratignolle, a friend of Edna’s, is perfectly content with her married lifestyle, acting as the perfect “Motherwoman”(Chopin 12). By displaying Adele as a foil of Edna, Chopin is able to emphasize the importance of love in a marriage.