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Contribution of women in literature
Research paper on kate chopins life
Contribution of women in literature
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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 …show more content…
In it they find a forerunner of Liberation. Though The Awakening has a similar path with Madame Bovary of Flaubert, it doesn’t share a lot with that amazing precursor. Emma Bovary awakens tragically and belatedly indeed, but Edna only goes from one reverie mode to another, until she frowns in the sea, which represents to her mother and the night, the inmost self and death. Edna is more isolated in the end than before. It is a very particular academic fashion that has had Edna transformed into some sort of a feminist heroine. In The Awakening, the protagonist, thus Edna, is a victim because she made herself one. Chopin shows it as having a hothouse atmosphere, but that doesn’t seem to be the only context for Edna, who loves no one in fact- not her husband, children, lovers, or friends- and the awakening of whom is only that of
Kate Chopin's novella The Awakening tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a woman who throughout the novella tries to find herself. Edna begins the story in the role of the typical mother-woman distinctive of Creole society but as the novelette furthers so does the distance she puts between herself and society. Edna's search for independence and a way to stray from society's rules and ways of life is depicted through symbolism with birds, clothing, and Edna's process of learning to swim.
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening takes place in the late 19th century, in Grande Isle off the coast of Louisiana. The author writes about the main character, Edna Pontellier, to express her empowering quality of life. Edna is a working housewife,and yearns for social freedom. On a quest of self discovery, Edna meets Madame Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz, falls in and out of love,and eventually ends up taking her own life. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening shows how the main character Edna Pontellier has been trapped for so many years and has no freedom, yet Edna finally “awakens” after so long to her own power and her ability to be free.
Leonce Pontellier, the husband of Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, becomes very perturbed when his wife, in the period of a few months, suddenly drops all of her responsibilities. After she admits that she has "let things go," he angrily asks, "on account of what?" Edna is unable to provide a definite answer, and says, "Oh! I don't know. Let me along; you bother me" (108). The uncertainty she expresses springs out of the ambiguous nature of the transformation she has undergone. It is easy to read Edna's transformation in strictly negative terms‹as a move away from the repressive expectations of her husband and society‹or in strictly positive terms‹as a move toward the love and sensuality she finds at the summer beach resort of Grand Isle. While both of these moves exist in Edna's story, to focus on one aspect closes the reader off to the ambiguity that seems at the very center of Edna's awakening. Edna cannot define the nature of her awakening to her husband because it is not a single edged discovery; she comes to understand both what is not in her current situation and what is another situation. Furthermore, the sensuality that she has been awakened to is itself not merely the male or female sexuality she has been accustomed to before, but rather the sensuality that comes in the fusion of male and female. The most prominent symbol of the book‹the ocean that she finally gives herself up to‹embodies not one aspect of her awakening, but rather the multitude of contradictory meanings that she discovers. Only once the ambiguity of this central symbol is understood can we read the ending of the novel as a culmination and extension of the themes in the novel, and the novel regains a...
Often in novels, a character faces conflicting directions of ambitions, desires, and influences. In such a novel, like “The Awakening,'; the main character, Edna Pontellier, faces these types of conflicting ideas. In a controversial era for women, Edna faces the conflict of living in oppression but desiring freedom. The patriarchal time period has influenced women to live only under the husband’s thumb but at the same time, break away from such repression. These opposing conflicts illuminated the meaning of “social awakening'; in the novel.
Kate Chopin created Edna Pontellier, but neither the character nor her creator was divorced from the world in which Chopin lived. As a means to understand the choices Chopin gave Edna, Margit Stange evaluates The Awakening in the context of the feminist ideology of the late nineteenth century. Specifically, she argues that Edna is seeking what Chopin’s contemporaries denoted self-ownership, a notion that pivoted on sexual choice and “voluntary motherhood” (276). Stange makes a series of meaningful connections between Kate Chopin’s dramatization of Edna Pontellier’s “awakening” and the historical context of feminist thought that Stange believes influenced the novel. For example, she equates Edna’s quest for financial independence with the late nineteenth century’s Married Women’s Property Acts, which sought to give married women greater control over their property and earnings. Ultimately, Stange believes, Edna’s awakening, her acquisition of self-determination, comes from identifying and re-distributing what she owns, which Stange argues is her body, much as contemporary feminist thinkers discussed what she calls women’s “sexual exchange value” (281). Additional references to reformers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as well as the legal standards of femme seule and femme couverte buttress Stange’s position that Edna’s experiences are a reflection of historical reality, even if some of the equations are a bit rough.
Chopin’s novel is filled with different themes. Her themes are what really gets her message to her readers. one of her themes is identity because becoming the person that you want to be is what The Awakening is all about. Knowing who you are is a big component in becoming free. That is why Chopin created an identity theme in her novel. Edna is constantly trying to find out who is wants to be. Edna knows that she is not the perfect mother and wife like Madame Ratignolle, and she also knows that she would never want to live alone like Mademoiselle Reisz. Who is the true Edna P? That is what Edna is find out, and that is the question most women should ask themselves. Who is the true me? Chopin has another theme that pushes her message even more.
The Awakening sheds light on the desire among many women to be independent. Throughout the novel Edna conducts herself in a way that was disavowed by many and comes to the realization that her gender prevented her from pursuing what she believed would be an enjoyable life. As the story progresses Edna continues to trade her family obligations for her own personal pleasures. This behavior would not have been accepted and many even criticize the novel for even speaking about such activities. Kate Chopin essentially wrote about everything a women couldn’t do. Moreover, it also highlights the point that a man is able to do everything Edna did, but without the same
In Chopin's The Awakening, the title itself is symbolic of the awakening that Edna undergoes throughout the course of the story. The story opens with Edna's first visit to Grand Isle, it is here that Edna will begin to awaken to herself. It is implied, and said, throughout the story that Edna is not the motherly type. "In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman." One might wonder then what exactly is Edna awakening to if not to her motherly instincts? According to the story, it is the awakening of "the sleeping places of her soul." In this time, women were expected to lay their sexuality aside as if it were a mere bag of flour. In return, they were given the joys of being a loving wife and mother. However, for a non - motherly woman such as Edna this would prove to be too great a price to pay for financial security.
In Kate Chopin's, The Awakening, Edna Pontellier came in contact with many different people during a summer at Grand Isle. Some had little influence on her life while others had everything to do with the way she lived the rest of her life. The influences and actions of Robert Lebrun on Edna led to her realization that she could never get what she wanted, which in turn caused her to take her own life.
...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.
One of many poignant themes in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is Edna Pontellier’s fundamental choice of lifestyle -- the choice of dedication to the aesthete, the solitude of art (as represented by Mademoiselle Reisz), or devotion to the all-consuming task of becoming a domestic goddess (as Madame Ratignolle has done). Considered mutually exclusive not only by Chopin but by American society as a whole, the role of the housewife leaves little room for the serious pursuit of art. As evidenced in Helen Watterson Moody’s contextual document "The Artist and Marriage," "The woman must decided, then, whether to pursue her chosen art or to marry will make her happier." The plethora of demands of the successful artistic lifestyle, which includes near absolute concentration on one’s craft, the time and space to truly create, and the solitude needed to express one’s essential self simply was not compatible with nineteenth century ideals of domesticity. Edna Pontellier, unwilling to submit to the relative asceticism of art and equally incapab...
By reading The Awakening, the reader gets a sense of what the life of a Creole woman is like. In actuality, though, it is not until reading the etiquette books, Chopin’s biographical information, and essays about the treatment of women at the time that there can be a deeper understanding of the rules Edna is breaking.
In fact, Edna seems to drift from setting to setting in the novel, never really finding her true self - until the end of the novel. Chopin seems highly concerned with this question throughout her narrative. On a larger scale, the author seems to be probing even more deeply into the essence of the female experience: Do women in general have a place in the world, and is the life of a woman the cumbersome pursuit to find that very place? The Awakening struggles with this question, raising it to multiple levels of complexity. Edna finds liberation and happiness in various places throughout the novel, yet this is almost immediately countered by unhappiness and misery.
Kate Chopin's novella, The Awakening. In Kate Chopin's novella, The Awakening, the reader is introduced into. a society that is strictly male-dominated where women fill in the stereotypical role of watching the children, cooking, cleaning and keeping up with appearances. Writers often highlight the values of a certain society by introducing a character who is alienated from their culture by a trait such as gender, race, or creed.
The Awakening is a novel in which the majority of significant events are mental or psychological, and the author presents these changes and gives them a sense of energy and excitement even though they are not really exciting events or actions. Kate Chopin does a fantastic job at giving excitement to The Awakening even when the events are not very action packed. The book starts off with Edna Pontellier coming back from a trip bathing on the beach with a man named Robert, and once they approach Edna’s husband back at the house she asks for her wedding ring back from Mr. Pontellier. This event by itself may seem odd or just practical but Chopin gave the reader a different idea with this scene and gives suspense