Identity Themes In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

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.

Knowing who you are is a big part in finding fight society since society is always trying to tell you who you need to be. Identity is one of Edna’s problem in the being of the book. She just did not know who she was or if who she is at first is the person she is supposed to be. She starts to realize she is not that she is not the person she wants to be because she does fit with the Creole women, and she is supposed to be one of them. She also starts noticing things in her life that she is unhappy with like how he husband treats her. Edna was two different people. She was this care free sprite on the inside and her outside conformed to society. Edna goes through a struggle with herself “At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life—that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.” (VII pg. 18). Who she was on the inside was fight to get to the outside. Chopin is saying that most women are like that, and even the Creole women weren’t true to themselves. They are supposed to be committed to their husbands, so they lived fancy lives through the books that they read about sex and etc. Most women fight with their selves on who they should be and who they want to be. As the story goes on the readers can see that Edna’s inner self is winning against her outer self which is conformed to the society. In the novel is says “she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that

By Edna finding herself in the book she was freeing herself. In the novel Edna finds a new hobby, painting. Painting was her escape from the world, and it made her feel good. In the novel it says that “Mrs. Pontellier had brought her sketching materials, which she sometimes dabbled with in an unprofessional way. She liked the dabbling. She felt in it satisfaction of a kind which no other employment afforded her.”(V pg 15) Chopin explain the feeling that Edna gets while painting. It is a feeling that nothing else give her, and that is why she does it even though she is not good. Painting is what gets Edna through because it is not easy becoming you own person. When thing seem to go left Edna paints. The novel Mr. Pontellier make a comment “’It seems to me the utmost folly for a woman at the head of a household, and the mother of children, to spend in an atelier day which would be better employed contriving for the comfort of her family.’" (XIX pg 62) This comment represent how society worked back then. In responds to his statement Edna just said "I feel like painting,"(XIX pg 62) By her say she wants to go paint after Mr. Pontellier made that comment Chopin is show that Edna is escaping, or freeing herself from society. Most women need some type of escape for themselves. They need something that will get them through the process of becoming free. They need something that will make them feel good when they are