Individualism And Sexuality In The Awakening By Kate Chopin

The Awakening by Kate Chopin, takes place in the late 1800’s where a young woman and mother chooses to break away from the predictable social role of a female and instead chooses to experiment with individualism and sexuality. While many individuals in the time period were categorized by race or wealth, The Awakening focuses more on gender and the societal expectations put on women. Edna Pontellier is a married woman and mother that is feeling somewhat emotionally detached to her loving but hard working husband. Women at that time were expected to birth multiple children, to be a stay at home mother, and to take care of keeping up with their appearance and the household. At one point, her husband for getting sunburn, considering her to be damaged property, scorns Edna. [insert quote] Valued only as property to be displayed to other men, Edna begins to feel more and more constrained by her roles and struggles with the societal views on equality initiating her self-discovery of individualism and sexuality.

While vacationing in Grand Isle, Louisiana Edna spends her time with a Creole friend while her husband is working and is exposed to an openness surrounding sexuality that she has never experienced before. Because Edna was not brought up in the type of culture where discussions about sexuality are traditional, she has trouble accepting the directness of her friend. Examples of this can be seen when novel is passed around that has some explicit sexual references in it. Christina R. Williams states in the article “Reading Beyond Modern Feminism: Kate Chopin’s The Awakening,” that “The Creole lifestyle of liberality across the sexes, shown by the participation of women in risqué́ conversations, rouses Edna’s sexual awakening...

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...ion that allowed Edna to express herself individualism and sexuality gave her an opportunity to awake from a life that was forced upon her by society – because she was born a woman. Chopin uses art throughout The Awakening as a way for Edna to explore self-discovery. At the end of the novel, as Edna swims out farther and farther out to sea in Grand Isle, she thinks back to her “mother-women” life and realizes that while she does miss some of it, that she would rather feel free. "…Leonce and the children. They were a part of her life. But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul" (Chopin 114). Stuck in a moral battle between her social responsibilities and her passion, Edna realizes that no matter how well she does artistically, society wont accept her new ‘awakened’ state and eventually gives up fighting releasing her soul to the sea.