The Awakening Alienation Quotes

923 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay on kate chopins the awakening and how edna goes through non conformity

The Awakening Essay

The Awakening
There is a variety of people that are alienated by others for the view of their culture or society, it may be because of their gender, race, class, or creed. Edna Pontellier from The Awakening by Kate Chopin, is an example of a character who felt alienated from society. Edna Pontellier is in the Victorian era; a mother-women in the society amongst the Creoles who is one of the many restrained of society's beliefs and nature. The society she lives in believing a mother-women should “idolize their children, worshiped their husbands” ( ), a mother-woman who should put her family herself. Edna, however, is a mother-woman who is breaking away of these stereotypical beliefs because she did not find her true happiness …show more content…

She felt a sense of fulfillment when she brought it with the money she had earned from the horse race she had gone with her father. It pleased her that “Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual” ( ). She was able to make the pigeon house her own, decorate it the way she wants it without others criticism. When her husband received the news of her actions he immediately felt a sense urgency of the fact that rumors may spread. Rumors about “ his financial integrity. It might get noised about that the Pontelliers had met with reverses... It might do incalculable mischief to his business prospects” ( ). He was afraid how his status as a creole will be damaged for the actions of his wife. This shows how distanced he is from his wife because he did not think about the reason for Edna’s actions. He sent her a letter telling her that she must return home, but he knew of “Enda’s whimsical turn of mind of late” ( ) and so he took matters into his own hands. He did not try to look for a reason for Edna’s actions because he is a creole, he does not feel alienated by others from the society he has lived in all his life. Edna has which is why she thought of him foolish, why should the people of the society care about her family affairs. Edna knew that society will not come to accept for who she really is, which made

Show More
Related

  • Kate Chopin's The Awakening

    1023 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • How Does Kate Chopin Use Characterization In The Awakening

    970 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Edna Pontellier, Madamoiselle Reisz And Madame Ratignolle

    805 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to the Louisiana society, Edna Pontellier has the ideal life, complete with two children and the best husband in the world. However, Edna disagrees, constantly crying over her feelings of oppression. Finally, Edna is through settling for her predetermined role in society as man’s possession, and she begins to defy this. Edna has the chance to change this stereotype, the chance to be “[t]he bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice” (112). The use of a metaphor comparing Edna to a bird proves her potential to rise above society’s standards and pave the pathway for future women. However, Edna does not have “strong [enough] wings” (112). After Robert, the love of her life and the man she has an affair with, leaves, Edna becomes despondent and lacks an...

    Read More

  • Free Awakening Essays: The Pigeon House

    457 Words  | 1 Pages

    The first taste of this newfound freedom is the satisfaction that Edna feels in being able to provide for herself with her own money. The fact that she no longer has to rely on her husband’s money breaks the last tie that she had with him: "I know I shall like it, like the feeling of freedom and independence."(80) In her mind now, her marriage is dead, and Mr. Pontellier has no control over her. Financial freedom is not the only thing the pigeon house gives to Edna; it also allows her both physical and spiritual freedom. When Edna kisses Arobin in her husband’s house, she feels "reproach looking at her from the external things around her which he had provided for her external existence."(84) Yet, her first night at the pigeon house she spends with Arobin, and this time feels no reproach or regret. As for the spiritual ramifications provided by her new home, Chopin writes, "There was a feeling of descending in the social scale, with the corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual.., she began to look with her own eyes... no longer was she content to feed upon opinion."(94) The pigeon house provides a way for Edna to escape from the society that she hates. She has the freedom to make the decisions in her life now; and she decides that she is going to live life by her own rules, not the rules that society has laid out for her. When she is within her home, she is free from the pressures of being the "mother women" which society forces her to be. The pigeon house nourishes this newfound freedom, allowing it to grow and gain strength.

    Read More

  • Edna's Struggle for Power in Chopin's The Awakening

    1390 Words  | 3 Pages

    Kate Chopin's The Awakening tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother living in the upper crust of New Orleans in the 1890s. It depicts her journey as her standing shifts from one of entrapment to one of empowerment. As the story begins, Edna is blessed with wealth and the pleasure of an affluent lifestyle. She is a woman of leisure, excepting only in social obligations. This endowment, however, is hindered greatly by her gender.

    Read More

  • The Role Of Reinvention In The Awakening

    1206 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening, the main protagonist Edna Pontellier, ventures through a journey of self-discovery and reinvention. Mrs.Pontellier is a mother and wife who begins to crave more from life, than her assigned societal roles. She encounters two opposite versions of herself, that leads her to question who she is and who she aims to be. Mrs. Pontellier’s journey depicts the struggle of overcoming the scrutiny women face, when denying the ideals set for them to abide. Most importantly the end of the novel depicts Mrs.Pontellier as committing suicide, as a result of her ongoing internal

    Read More

  • Irony In Chopin's 'The Awakening'

    1113 Words  | 3 Pages

    Edna’s move into the Pigeon House is symbolic as well as physical because it “added to her to her strength and expansion as an individual”. This implies that Edna is striving towards her independence away from Mr. Pontiellier and her kids, and a deep sought into her life. This represents in the development of her self-awareness that Edna is no longer concerned of about the content of “feed upon opinion when her own soul had invited her.” In hence, Edna is no longer in care of others’ lives and what they think of Edna, that she only wants to focus on her own.

    Read More

  • The True Identity In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

    1882 Words  | 4 Pages

    She desperately wanted a voice and independence. Edna’s realization of her situation occurred progressively. It was a journey in which she slowly discovered what she was lacking emotionally. Edna’s first major disappointment in the novel was after her husband, Leonce Pontellier, lashed out at her and criticized her as a mother after she insisted her child was not sick. This sparked a realization in Edna that made here realize she was unhappy with her marriage. This was a triggering event in her self discovery. This event sparked a change in her behavior. She began disobeying her husband and she began interacting inappropriately with for a married woman. Edna increasingly flirted with Robert LeBrun and almost instantly became attracted to him. These feelings only grew with each interaction. Moreover, when it was revealed to Edna that Robert would be leaving for Mexico she was deeply hurt not only because he didn’t tell her, but she was also losing his company. Although Edna’s and Robert’s relationship may have only appeared as friendship to others, they both secretly desired a romantic relationship. Edna was not sure why she was feeling the way she was “She could only realize that she herself-her present self-was in some way different from the other self. That she was seeing with different eyes and making the acquaintance of new conditions in herself that colored

    Read More

  • Comparing Edna Pontellier and Adele in Kate Chopin's The Awakening

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    Edna Pontellier is not a Creole, so her relationship with her husband is difficult. In her husband's eyes she has failed in her duties as a wife and as a mother to her own children. What Enda's husband expects from her is never what she does. Leonce comes home in the middle of the night and talks to Edna while she is sleeping. Then he tells her that Raoul one of their sons is sick and tells her to get up and check on him. Edna had never really had the desire to have children but she did anyway. She was not a "mother-woman" because she would rather be alone sometimes; she did not feel she had to be with her children twenty-four hours a day. If one Edna's boys "....took a tumble whilst at play, he would not apt rush crying to his mother's arms for comfort; he would more likely pick himself up"(16). Enda never felt that she fit in with Creole society because she "...most forcibly was their entire absence of prudery"(19). The Creoles' would talk about things such as childbirth and would flirt with others and not mean anything. Yet Edna would never dream of talking about her childbirth's with anyone or flirting unless she meant it. Creole women devoted their whole lives to their husbands where Enda was carefree and did as she pleased. She was carefree because she would go out onto the beach with only a sundress and a little hat on when she was suppose to be all covered up so she would not become sun burnt.

    Read More

  • Breaking the Social Norms: Kate Chopin's The Awakening

    1558 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • feminaw Suicide as the Only Alternative for Edna Pontellier in The Awakening

    945 Words  | 2 Pages

    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)

    Read More

  • Madness And Madness In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

    872 Words  | 2 Pages

    Her memory of running away from her Father and church when she was a young girl living in Kentucky shows how desperate she is to be free. However, Edna gives up her hopes of freedom for marriage in the hopes that all will fall into place afterwards. Edna’s expectation that marriage and children is proven false when she still is not happy with her life afterwards. She feels that life is worthless and that there should be more to what she is. Edna is not like the other creole mothers; she holds an affection for her children, but it comes and goes. Occasionally she will hold them fiercely to her chest and yet others she will forget them. Her husband disapproves of her lack of maternal instinct and rebukes her when he discovers one of their children, Raoul, sick in his bed. Edna is not alarmed by it, but his harsh words make her burst into tears on the front porch, after he has fallen asleep. Mr. Pontellier does not care about his wife much as a person, only as something he owns. He views everything this way, new lace curtains, glassware, furniture. He is disappointed in his wife because, in his view, she does not function well as a mother. Edna’s lack of

    Read More

  • Kate Chopin's The Awakening

    1882 Words  | 4 Pages

    During the late nineteenth century, the time of protagonist Edna Pontellier, a woman's place in society was confined to worshipping her children and submitting to her husband. Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, encompasses the frustrations and the triumphs in a woman's life as she attempts to cope with these strict cultural demands. Defying the stereotype of a "mother-woman," Edna battles the pressures of 1899 that command her to be a subdued and devoted housewife. Although Edna's ultimate suicide is a waste of her struggles against an oppressive society, The Awakening supports and encourages feminism as a way for women to obtain sexual freedom, financial independence, and individual identity.

    Read More

  • Awakening

    2436 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Social Expectations In The Awakening

    1058 Words  | 3 Pages

    Social expectations of women affected Edna and other individuals in Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening. The protagonist, Edna Pontellier, struggles throughout the novel in order to become independent and avoid her roles as mother and housewife in American Victorian society in 1899. This was because women during the 19th century were limited by what society demanded of them, to be the ideal housewives who would take care of their families. However, Edna tries to overcome these obstacles by exploring other options, such as having secret relationships with Robert and Arobin. Although Edna seeks to be independent throughout the novel, in the end she has been awakened but has not achieved independence.

    Read More

More about The Awakening Alienation Quotes

Open Document