Rebellious women in The Awakening and in Ruth Hall Kate Chopin’s The awakening and Fanny Fern’ Ruth Hall A Domestic Tale of The Present Time are both written about the women’s sufferings in the male dominated society. Both authors engrave women who perform the uncommon role in the society. The protagonist Edna, of The Awakening is a woman who is trying to discover her identity. She shakes the whole system of women’s role inn nineteen century, and distresses those who expects certain roles that women should play. She surprised patriarchal society by ignoring her role to play as a wife and mother. The idea of motherhood is very dominant theme of this book. Edna wants to live with her own identity instead of a mother of Raoul and Etienne, that dictate her identity as Leonce Pontellier’s wife Mr. Potellier. Edna started to notice her desire life of freedom and individuality contradict with the society’s expected role of mother and wife. She wants to break this law, and rebel against society’s and nature’ laws. She cannot skip her destiny, and cannot free herself from the repression of the society. Therefore she freed herself by suicide. In the social context of Edna one can separate herself from rest of the world, or can define to choose a life which is belong to male, and consider herself as subhuman. Adele Ratignolle is a ‘mother woman’, because she is personified as fixed wife and mother. Such women’ world is surrounded by her husband and children. She is a very brilliant pianist, and her private act, playing piano is for the purpose of her family. (Quote). Her frequent concentration on pregnancy seems improper to Edna. As if Adele is meant to be a mother, and she pleased to feel it. According to Edna, mother women are failing... ... middle of paper ... ... social environment, and by Edna Chopin demonstrates against limited choices for freedom for women. Her desire and belief rebel the society created norms, and her actions are great evidence that proves it. By living in a dark conservative society, Ruth also faces difficulties to sustain in the female role presses on her. She seems to get out of the system and tries to stand on her own. Avoiding social norms is tough and many times because of conservative repressive societal demands, but many women crave social change. Fern and Chopin portrayed their character to show us that not every woman can accepts their fate and suffers quietly. Many women rebel and come out from their prescribed social role. They try to listen their personal needs and desire, and they attempt to change their position rather than following the social pressure they cannot manage or control.
Madame Ratignolle simply does not understand Edna; to her, sacrificing one’s life is the utmost that a mother can do for her children. It is as if Edna was not even “talking the same language.” In fact, the two women might well be speaking different languages. Unlike Madame Ratignolle who seems to have a baby every couple of years, Edna’s head is not filled exclusively with thoughts about her children. Whereas Madame Ratignolle is motherly at all times, Edna often seems irritated by her role as mother, and her attentions to her children often occur as an afterthought. Madame Ratignolle’s entire being is bound to her children; Edna’s being is of her own design. For her there is more to life than marriage and babies and social obligations. Edna might well, at least in this passage, be asserting an early version of what Betty Friedan discusses in The Feminine Mystique.
When her husband and children are gone, she moves out of the house and purses her own ambitions. She starts painting and feeling happier. “There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day” (Chopin 69). Her sacrifice greatly contributed to her disobedient actions. Since she wanted to be free from a societal rule of a mother-woman that she never wanted to be in, she emphasizes her need for expression of her own passions. Her needs reflect the meaning of the work and other women too. The character of Edna conveys that women are also people who have dreams and desires they want to accomplish and not be pinned down by a stereotype.
During the nineteenth century, Chopin’s era, women were not allowed to vote, attend school or even hold some jobs. A woman’s role was to get married, have children
Essentially, Edna is not able to fulfill any of the roles that are presented by Chopin in the novel: mother, sister, daughter, wife, friend, artist, lover to either man, and finally the traditional role of a woman in society. She does not quite fit into any niche, and thus her suicide at the end of the novel is the only way for Edna’s story to end. Chopin must have Edna die, as she cannot survive in this restrained society in which she does not belong to. The idea of giving yourself completely to serve another, Edna declares “that she would never sacrifice herself for her children, or for any one” (47). However, her awakening is also a realization of her underprivileged position in a male dominated society. The first sign that Edna is becoming comfortable with herself, and beginning to loosen the constrictions of not being an individual is when she asks Robert, her husband, to retrieve her shawl: "When he returned with the shawl she took it and kept it in her hand. She did not put it around her" (30). Edna is trying to establish herself as an artist in a society where there is no tradition of women as creative beings. For any woman to suggest a desire for a role outside the domestic sphere, as more than a mother or housewife, was perceived as
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)
It tells the story of a woman named Edna Pontellier, who of which, goes on a journey to try to find her identity in the world. In doing so, Mrs. Pontellier has to deal with a “...marriage…” with a demanding husband and a hectic agenda of trying to keep watch of her two young “...children…” (“Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening””). Outside of balancing these stressful everyday occurrences, Edna tries to calm herself by trying to take advice from her friends Adele Ratignolle and Robert Lebrun. Thereupon, in talking with Ratignolle, Edna is told to give in to “...life’s delirium…” of doing of what is expected of her as a wife and a mother (94). Unlike that of Mrs. Pontellier’s predicament, Adele has given into that of their civilization’s ideal outlook of being a woman who has completely immersed herself in that of the wellbeing of her family and of nothing else. Appalled by this response, Edna labels it as being a “...colorless [and]...blind contentment…” and then goes on to describe Adele as being brainwashed (93). Moreover, when she talks to Robert she also does not get the guidance she so desperately needs, and/or seeks. While Robert is less affected by that of their society's social normality of only caring about family, he still does not comprehend of why Mrs. Pontellier would want to be “...independent...” when she has a high standing by being that of a “...married woman with children…” (“Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening””/36). Upset by the fact that neither Mrs. Ratignolle or Mr. Lebrun could comprehend her desire of wanting to find herself, and of not following the typical lifestyle women adopted, Edna becomes confused and frustrated. Consequently, because of these two emotions that she now bares, they become her downfall at the end of the
The Awakening was a very exciting and motivating story. It contains some of the key motivational themes that launched the women’s movement. It was incredible to see how women were not only oppressed, but how they had become so accustomed to it, that they were nearly oblivious to the oppression. The one woman, Edna Pontellier, who dared to have her own feelings was looked upon as being mentally ill. The pressure was so great, that in the end, the only way that she felt she could be truly free was to take her own life. In this paper I am going to concentrate on the characters central in Edna’s life and her relationships with them.
I can't make it more clear; it's only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me….but a woman who would give her life for her children could do no more than that” (Chopin.64). Both Edna and Adele have contrasting ideas about motherhood. Since Adele’s personality causes no cognitive dissonance she has no idea what Edna means when she says she would not give up herself. But while Adele pitys Edna , Edna is also pitying Adele. Because even though Adele is happy and free of anguish Edna is experiencing she lives in this colorless existence unknowingly following a path society said she must. This is why it’s so hard for Adele to understand Edna: A woman who does not fit that role, does not possess the same domestic harmony, and also is very detached from her family. The anguish and cognitive dissonance that surrounds Edna is due to the fact knows what others want her to be and their inability to understand others may be different. Despite the detachment and isolation Edna will not chop the pieces of herself off that do not fit into the mold and she will not give up
Nineteenth-century society was an era that was defined by one ideology: “separate spheres.” Resting on preconceived notions of male and female characteristics, men, being the strongest of the species, were expected to work, while the women-with well-credited rectitude over their male counterparts-were expected to care for the home and raise their army of children to lead their family tree into world domination and carry on the misogynistic line of male hierarchy. Edna’s life is parallel to this Victorian era philosophy of the “separate spheres,” and it is these exact demands that that finally push her to find herself. The main source of this awakening does not just come from her somewhat backward love connection to Robert Lebrun, but from the
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.
In Chopin’s novel The Awakening, she incorporates the themes mentioned above to illustrate the veracity of life as she understands it. A literary work approached by the feminist critique seeks to raise awareness of the importance and higher qualities of women. Women in literature may uncover their strengths or find their independence, raising their own self-recognition. Several critics deem Chopin as one of the leading feminists of her age because she was willing to publish stories that dealt with women becoming self-governing, who stood up for themselves and novels that explored the difficulties that they faced during the time. Chopin scrutinized sole problems and was not frightened to suggest that women desired something that they were not normally permitted to have: independence.
Chopin portrayed a woman’s desire to break away from social norms and live for herself through the main character Edna Pontellier buying her own house, having a relationship with another man while being married, and ultimately taking her own life when she felt she had no other way to be truly happy. Chopin’s decision to write about such controversial views is what made this novel one to be remembered for years to come. This novel brought to light the challenges and prejudice that all women during that time period felt, and some women still might feel
Traditional gender roles are important in society, and the violations of these gender roles or over-adherence to them may cause many issues to surface. These issues may be caused within one’s self, other people, or society. By looking through the feminist lens, the theme of gender roles can be seen in The Awakening by Kate Chopin. The characters of Madame Adele Ratignolle, Leonce Pontellier, and Mademoiselle Reisz, all either uphold or rebel against the social norms of gender roles.
Edna Pontellier is a married woman with 2 children, who has a different objective in her future life. She wants to be different from all the women in the society and breaks societal rules in order
Everybody is different in every unique way, and that a group of people being in the same roof doesn’t mean they are similar, but that they influence by each other time through time. Through Edna’s transformation, Chopin, under the feminism lense, condemns the sexist society and stand up for the equality, rights of a woman. Chopin portrays how society affects to people behave and thinking which is a two slide knife that could whether more useful or more harmful.