Finding True Freedom in The Awakening
Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening details the endeavors of heroine Edna Pontellier to cope with the realization that she is not, nor can she ever be, the woman she wants to be. Edna has settled for less. She is married for all the wrong reasons, saddled with the burden of motherhood, and trapped by social roles that would never release her. The passage below is only one of the many tender and exquisitely sensory passages that reveal Edna’s soul to the reader.
"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, dancing, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace."(32)
When Edna's one chance for change; her only hope, Robert, deserts her, she realizes that her dreams are unachievable. It is this grim acceptance that steals our heroine's last shard of optimism from her. Edna Pontellier's suicide is completely believable, justifiable, and understandable. This world was too cruel for her tender spirit; this life too stifling for her to bear. None of this surprises me. How many women (or men, for that matter) go through life with their eyes closed? How many find it easier to simply shut out the ugliness and horror that surrounds them? Finally seeing the loathsome existence they are a part of can simply be "too much" for many to sustain. Utter despair and hopelessness soon devour that fragile soul, with frailty too great for this existence.
Mr. Pontellier's thoughts reveal much about Edna's nature to us, and perhaps most of her mistakes as well. He feels that "his wife...
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... The social roles she was trying to break away from would never really have released her. "Leonce and the children…were a part of her life. But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul" (137). I find myself wishing that she had never opened her eyes; that she could have lived out her days blissfully ignorant of the circumstances which bound her. This being impossible, even more than the idea of a life of her own, Edna chose the only possible option to escape from an existence full of unfulfilled desires and unhappiness.
Edna re-enters the sea; scene of her first taste of power and emancipation. She returns because it offers her the only other possible freedom she is allowed; the freedom of death. It is not an act of weakness, or romanticism…it is that of a woman claiming her liberty, her strength…and her self…one last time.
Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow immediately became an influential work both in the academic and real worlds because of the dramatic events that coincided with the book’s publication and subsequent revisions. It was inspired from a series of lectures that Woodward delivered at the University of Virginia in 1954 on the Jim Crow policies that the South had reverted to in order to deal with the dynamics of its Negro population. The original publication debuted in 1955, just prior to the explosive events that would occur as part of the civil rights movement climax. Because of these developments in less than a decade, the book’s topic and audience had drastically changed in regard to the times surrounding it. Woodward, realizing the fluidity of history in context with the age, printed a second edition of the book in 1966 to “take advantage of the new perspective the additional years provide” and “to add a brief account of the main developments in ...
Assumptions from the beginning, presumed the Jim Crow laws went hand in hand with slavery. Slavery, though, contained an intimacy between the races that the Jim Crow South did not possess. Woodward used another historian’s quote to illustrate the familiarity of blacks and whites in the South during slavery, “In every city in Dixie,’ writes Wade, ‘blacks and whites lived side by side, sharing the same premises if not equal facilities and living constantly in each other’s presence.” (14) Slavery brought about horrible consequences for blacks, but also showed a white tolerance towards blacks. Woodward explained the effect created from the proximity between white owners and slaves was, “an overlapping of freedom and bondage that menaced the institution of slavery and promoted a familiarity and association between black and white that challenged caste taboos.” (15) The lifestyle between slaves and white owners were familiar, because of the permissiveness of their relationship. His quote displayed how interlocked blacks...
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
Department of Labor. (2013). The worker adjustment and retraining notification act [Fact sheet]. Retrieved from http://www.doleta.gov/programs/factsht/warn.htm
Oryx and Crake offers plentiful examples of failed mother-child relationships.Jimmy’s complicated relationship with his mother is developed most thoroughly. Herdistance, depression, and distraction stem from the work she does. Like Offred’s motherin The Handmaid’s Tale, she stays busy working. Unlike Offred’s mother (whose careeris never specified), Jimmy’s mother works for a large bio-technology corporation. Herprofessional status as a microbiologist, unthinkable in the patriarchal culture of Gilead,should make a progressive, positive statement about women’s achievement of equality.Her work ultimately threatens her sanity, though. As a result, she abandons her onlychild.
Boston, Gabriella. "Review of Much Ado about Nothing.." Washington Times (16 Nov. 2002): D2. Rpt. in Shakespearean Criticism. Ed. Michelle Lee. Vol. 88. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Jan. 2014.
In the novella The Awakening by Kate Chopin, the main character Edna Pontellier “becomes profoundly alienated from traditional roles required by family, country, church, or other social institutions and is unable to reconcile the desire for connection with others with the need for self-expression” (Bogard). The novella takes place in the South during the 1800’s when societal views and appearances meant everything. There were numerous rules and expectations that must be upheld by both men and women, and for independent, stubborn, and curious women such as Edna, this made life challenging. Edna expressed thoughts and goals far beyond her time that made her question her role in life and struggle to identify herself, which caused her to break societal conventions, damage her relationships, and ultimately lose everything.
Smith, Lindsay. "Much Ado About Nothing Concept Analysis." Novelinks.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2014.
Edna is awakened to the fact that she has no lasting relationship with anyone in her life. Her friendships with women are surface level and not genuine and her relationship with Robert crumble with a note, “Good-by -- because I love you.” That note acted as the last straw for young Edna who was completely alone in the isolated world she created for herself, a saddening image. “[Her solitary swim] is clearly symbolized by the final episode in the book: her solitary swim far out into the emptiness of the Gulf” (Ringe 587). She stripped down, possibly symbolizing her complete surrender of all facades and schemes and went into the vast ocean. Whether she intended to take her own life or not is still debated, but one thing is for sure, she was trying to escape reality once again, but it cost her
Her ultimate downfall is received through the assumptions that the repercussions to her actions will have no effect on her and that they will resolve themselves. When becoming bored with her housewife routine, Edna starts up a steamy affair with a man named Robert. He eventually leaves to go to Mexico, symbolizing how unstable the decisions Edna is making are. This instability follows her back into her family life, and she decides to become independent. But, the unhealthy spirals she submits herself to earlier in the novel continue, leading to her death by drowning in the end, “She felt like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known”(Chopin,125); an act that symbolizes the embrace of social death she experienced in her life.
Standing outside on the deck when I pulled in next to his VW was Mike, most likely because I had sent him a text 5 minutes prior to tell him I was close. Picture a scruffy bearded, blond hair, blue-eyed, white Canadian that stands about 5 feet 10 inches tall and probably 180 pounds. Still, somehow he's always come off as a pretty boy. He dresses what you might call alternative, and doesn't talk like the stereotypical rapper. After collecting what I needed, I walked up the stone walkway. It smelt like the grass had just been cut that morning, and the yard, small, still very elegant. It had a couple waist-high shrubs and hedges along the fence line.
Saks, A. M., & Burke, L. A. (2012). An investigation into the relationship between training evaluation and the transfer of training. International Journal of Training & Development, 16(2), 118-127.
A casual look at the world today reveals the evidence that Jesus’s efforts were effective. Christianity is currently throughout most parts of the world, and ...
After review of latest research papers and publications, skill gap in textile industry has been analysed in different conventional sectors as like spinning, weaving, processing and garmenting and based on that most appropriate training programmes and methodology of training has been suggested.
Kate Chopin's master novel, The Awakening, takes the modern reader to an earlier time while still provoking the questions of morality and self-sacrifice that exist in the present age. Edna Pontellier, the protagonist of the story, places herself as the individual against society from the onset of the novel. Throughout initial chapters, her sporadic characteristics and actions worthy of rebuke lead to a breakdown of her moral integrity. These behaviors permit her eventually to become a woman that not only her Creole culture, but civilization in general no longer accepts.