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Kate chopin biography and the effect of it on her writing
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Madame Bovary as a Template for Kate Chopin’s The Awakening
The story of Edna Pontellier, the heroine of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, echoes that of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Both novels tell about young wives who recognize the hollowness of their marriages and look outside them for fulfillment. While the similarities are deep and numerous, Chopin’s characterization and plot diverge from those of Flaubert. Madame Bovary does contain a hint of advocacy for women, however Chopin’s version of the story reflects the author’s status as one of America’s first feminist authors. Perhaps Chopin’s dissent does not constitute an objection to Flaubert’s portrayal of womanhood, which is very sensitive and thoughtful. There is, in fact, a feminist savor to Madame Bovary. Emma hopes she will have a son, because
A man, at least, is free; he can explore each passion and every kingdom, conquer obstacles, feast upon the most exotic pleasures. But a woman is continually thwarted. Both inert and yielding, against her are ranged the weakness of the flesh and the inequity of the law…. Always there is the desire urging, always there is the convention restraining. (MB, 70) 1
In the story-line, and perhaps in those hints of feminism, Chopin saw the chance to make a point. She borrowed Flaubert’s storyline to write a feminist manifesto; more a tract than a novel, The Awakening is starkly written, with much less subtlety than Madame Bovary. For instance, Flaubert communicates the shallow, materialistic nature of Charles’s attitude towards Emma by contrasting his fascination with her looks, “he gazed at the sunlight playing in the golden down on her cheeks…” (MB, 25), with his obliviousness to her thoughts and personality. On the other hand, Chop...
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... kills herself by swimming out to sea “with a long, sweeping stroke” (A, 152), using her strength to aid her decision and the power (her swimming ability) that she discovered that summer, at the beginning of her awakening. In the end, Chopin’s heroine is not weak and defeated in death, not tortured with seizures, not the subject of gossip and mockery, not the gruesome object beneath a sheet. Edna dies in the memory of herself, her childhood. She controls her own life and her own end. She is triumphant.
Works Cited
1 Quotations from Madame Bovary are cited in the text with the abbreviation listed below.
MB: Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. Geoffrey Wall (London: Penguin Books, 1992).
2 Quotations from The Awakening are cited in the text with the abbreviation listed below.
A: Kate Chopin, The Awakening (Cutchogue, N.Y.: Buccaneer Books, 1993).
The irony of the story is the Edna learns how to swim ,yet she used the sea to take her own life. When the author states’ “But it was too late, the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone. She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant then sank again”(135). In this quote the author ,Chopin, chose to show irony to end Edna’s character because Edna had faced her fears,and learned to swim and not fear the water. However ,the climax is also shocking for the readers because the author had shown Edna’s character as a strong women who had faced her fears and learned how to swim. By Edna killing herself the author shows us that Edna never changed and she is still that weak broken women who is trapped in life that she was so desperate to get out
In The Awakening, Kate Chopin depicts the varying definitions of women and their role through her three major female characters, Edna Pontellier, Madamoiselle Reisz and Madame Ratignolle. In the late 1800s, the role of women was strictly being caretakers for both their children and husbands. Edna Pontellier attempts to fit into society’s expectations by marrying Léonce Pontellier and raising two children, yet she struggles with feelings of oppression as she suffers through her unwanted role. Mademoiselle Reisz, a talented musician, is unmarried and childless, rejecting all of society’s ideals. Edna’s friend, Madame Ratignolle, greatly contrasts the two as she represents the model Louisiana women. However, while Edna, Madamoiselle Reisz and Madame Ratignolle each depict a different idea of woman’s role in society, none of these three women reach their full individual potential.
Self-report has always been one the easiest ways to gain insight of a person’s personality. These test can range from quizzes filled out online that tell you which pop star is your personality twin to standardized tests requiring a certified test user. Some of the most popular and highly researched tests have been the MMPI and its successors. The MMPI, created by Stark R. Hathaway and John Charneley McKinley, was the first step towards the MMPI-2-RF. The MMPI was firstly created to test individuals who were 14 years old and older. Throughout the years, the MMPI has through a lot of changes, evolving into three tests used today: MMPI-2, MMPI-A, and MMPI-2-RF (Cohen & Swerdlik, 2013).
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)
In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier’s suicide is an assertion of her independence and contributes to Chopin’s message that to be independent one must choose between personal desires and societal expectations. Chopin conveys this message through Edna’s reasons for committing suicide and how doing so leads her to total independence. Unlike the other women of Victorian society, Edna is unwilling to suppress her personal identity and desires for the benefit of her family. She begins “to realize her position in the universe as a human being and to recognize her relationship as an individual to the world within and about her” (35).
The 1890’s were an era of rapid social change in regards to women’s rights. In 1893, Colorado was the first state granting women the right to vote with Utah and Idaho following soon after in 1896. This soon set momentum towards of ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. It was in 1899 the Kate Chopin published The Awakening, a novel telling the tale of a suppressed mother, Edna Pontellier, and her desire for something more in her life. Literary scholars consider Chopin’s The Awakening as a subtle yet effective portrayal of women of the late 19th century and consider it as an important piece of the feminism movement. Throughout the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, women had felt controlled by men and the demands society put upon them. Men had held a discriminatory view of women throughout this era, for they merely saw women as property. Women were expected to bear a man’s child, care for the child, and watch over the household while the man was away. The Awakening was an eye-opening novel in that it challenged the social structure of the time in which men dominated society. This novel showed the discriminatory view of women and treatment of women. The novel also does a great job in showing the dissatisfaction in the women’s lives, particularily through the actions of Edna Pontellier. Due to society’s expectations, women were not allowed to pursue their psychological or sexual drives, for it was scorned by society. Edna pursues these drives as she eventually cannot tolerate her way of living. In The Awakening, Chopin’s use of three characters, Edna Pontellier, Adele Ratignolle, and Mademoiselle Reisz, exemplifies the accepted roles of women in the late 19th century.
The article under review is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the DSM-5: Controversy, Change, and Conceptual Considerations by Anushka Pai, Alina M. Suris, and Carol S. North in Behavioral Sciences. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a mental health problem that some people develop after experiencing or witnessing a life-threatening event, like combat, a natural disaster, a car accident, or sexual assault (U.S. Department VA, 2007). PTSD can happen to anyone and many factors can increase the possibility of developing PTSD that are not under the person’s own control. Symptoms of PTSD usually will start soon after the traumatic event but may not appear for months or years later. There are four types of symptoms of PTSD but may show in different
Homelessness has different meanings to different people; someone who has never been homeless might think homelessness is a person who lives on the street, in a tent or in a box. Many people don’t realize that there are a number of homeless people, who couch surf with friends, family or the ones who live in motels which are unaccountable in the numbers of homeless people. People including families with children, seniors, single parents, youths and those that are single are living in accommodations that are below standards and consider themselves as homeless.
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.
According to a veteran, anxiety and depression are often misdiagnosed as PTSD. Since the Vietnam War, the occurrence and diagnosis of PTSD has skyrocketed. After a sev-ere reduction in the rate of PTSD in veterans where poorly documented PTSD cases were culled from the collection, Bruce P. Dohr-enwend of Columbia found a 13% reduction in the lifetime rate of PTSD; in a continuation of Dohr-enwend’s work, McNally concluded that a majority of PTSD patients were fit to live in everyday life, re-ducing the lifetime rate of PTSD by another 7% (Dobbs 2). In addition, many veterans have been known to be over- or under-reporting their PTSD symptoms, making the accurate diagnosis even more trouble-some.
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening should be seen as depicting the discontentment that comes from self-gratification rather than the glorification of delighting in one’s fantasies. Chopin describes the central idea of one who is seeking to please her personal needs and desires and, in the process, neglects to notice how her actions affect others. The protagonist, Edna, is not able to find peace or happiness in the accepted daily life that a woman of her era and social status should have. The fulfilling of her desires could essentially cause social ostracism for her, her husband, and her children, yet she is unable to find repose in living the typical social Victorian life. The final resolve of her “awakening” to her desires, her ultimate suicide, is not an honorable position that women should strive toward as a romantic ideal because her desires were hopeless in her situation. Through Edna’s striving for personal satisfaction, she loses the joys that daily life has to offer.
Lerner, J W., Lowenthal, B, & Egan, R W. (2003). Preschool children with special needs (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon Publishing.
The Awakening which was written by Kate Chopin, it was about a woman named Edna who discovered herself throughout the story. Kate Chopin was considered an advocate for feminism during the 20th Century because of the novels she wrote. Feminism is when women want equal rights as men. Although most believe the book The Awakening to be a feminist text, it was more of an exploration of her life realizing her needs and desires.
Upon returning to the University of Hong Kong, I was greatly inspired by the Career Exposure Project, thinking that it would be an eye-opening opportunity for me to take a glance at the publishing industry in Hong Kong. I had always positioned myself as a linguistic student with remarkable academic records and strong analytical abilities, which seemed to match the requirements for an editor. With much confidence and enthusiasm for this project, I immediately reached out for my contacts on LinkedIn after the first lecture, and successfully received an offer from Mr. Lau, Publishing Manager of Dictionaries at Oxford University Press (OUP), two days later. Aside from being amazed by the efficiency of my host, I believed that my advantage was rooted half a year ago when I first started building my LinkedIn profile and positioning myself as a university student seeking opportunities to enter the publishing industry. As the old saying goes, “opportunities favor prepared minds”. This seemed to confirm that I was on the right track of self-positioning: an early start to present myself in a more professional way has certainly helped me stand out among all other applicants of OUP.
For this assignment I have carried out a job study for the Hotel Management industry.