The Awakening by Kate Chopin follows the journey of protagonist Edna Pontellier as she "awakens" from a life of obedience and complacency and rebels against the patriarchal ideology that entraps her. Throughout the novel she strives to fee herself form the stifling obligations and expectations that oppress her, but finds that she is unable to live the free life she desires. This realization causes her to seek freedom in death, instead. In Marxist theory, particularly as subscribed to by Louis Althusser, it is the role of the repressive state apparatuses (RSAs) and the ideological state apparatuses (ISAs) to provide willing workers and supplies to the base and enable a system to reproduce itself. It is the ideological state apparatuses, however, …show more content…
The men of the novel, particularly the three male leads Léonce Pontellier, Robert Lebrun, and Alcée Arobin all worry intensely about maintaining their constructed reputations. Edna Pontellier's husband Léonce, an "antagonist" and of the main sources of Edna's oppression feels the constant scrutiny of societal judgment. He all but panics at the thought of Edna missing the all important "reception day" without so much as an excuse for her absence (49). His immediate thought upon learning his wife has moved out of their house is not worry about her well being, despite the fact he believes her to be emotionally/mentally disturbed. He worries more about it being thought he is having financial difficulties (89). This may seem to be an example of pure narcissism on his part, but it, in fact, illustrates deep-seated insecurity that he is not fitting his mold as a "proper" Creole man -- a successful businessman who is a good provider for his wife and children. He is not alone in his desire to conform to what a proper man should be, however. Robert Lebrun falls in love with Edna but cannot live with the disapproval from society - even in his own fantasies. He informs Edna how he dreamed of Mr. Pontellier "setting her free" and giving her over to his own ownership (102). Edna scoffs at this idea of ownership, but it is the common position a "good" man to have a woman as his wife, a rightful …show more content…
Léonce Pontellier devotes himself to being the high-power businessman and wage earner, to the exclusion of almost everything else, including his wife. Robert Lebrun turns away from love because adherence to the decorum of a gentleman, and Alcée Arobin plays the shallow seducer, but has trouble telling where the act ends. Edna Ponteiller, unlike the others, fully recognizes she has been cast to play a role and decides that she no longer desires it. She would be willing to make her own role, and risk her reputation, but finds that she cannot live the life she wants without making her children's lives into a scandal as well. In The Awakening, Chopin illustrates succesfully how ideology shapes everyone, with or without their
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.
Franklin, R. F. "The Awakening and the Failure of Psyche" American Literature 56 (Summer 1984): 510-526.
Chopin, Kate. "The Awakening." The Norton Anthology of American Literature.. Gen. ed. Nina Baym. 8th ed. Vol. C. New York: Norton, 2012. 561-652. Print.
Kate Chopin's The Awakening is a terrific read and I am hardly able to put it down! I am up to chapter XV and many of the characters are developing in very interesting ways. Edna is unfulfilled as a wife and mother even though she and her husband are financially well off. Her husband, Leonce Pontellier, is a good husband and father but he has only been paying attention to his own interests. At this point he is unaware of the fact that his wife's needs are not being met. Robert and the other characters are equally intriguing but something else has piqued my interest. Some of Chopin's characters are not fully developed. I know that these are important characters because they are representative of specific things; they are metaphoric characters. In particular, I've noticed the lovers and the lady in black. I'm fascinated by the fact that both the lovers and the lady in black are completely oblivious to the rest of the world. They are also in direct contrast with each another. For this week's reader response I am taking a different approach. Rather than analyzing the main characters, I will examine the lovers and the lady in black.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. A Norton Critical Edition: Kate Chopin: The Awakening. Ed. Margo Culley. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994. 3-109.
Being a woman, she is completely at the mercy of her husband. He provides for her a lifestyle she could not obtain on her own and fixes her place in society. This vulnerability stops Edna from being truly empowered. To gain independence as a woman, and as a person, Edna must relinquish the stability and comfort she finds in the relationship with her husband. Mr. and Mrs. Pontellier's marriage comprises a series of power plays and responds well to Marxist and Feminist Theory. Leonce Pontellier looks "…at his wife as one who looks at a valuable piece of property…". He views her as an accessory that completes the ideal life for him. Edna, however, begins to desire autonomy and independence from Leonce, so true to the feminist point of view.
Dawson, Hugh J. "Kate Chopin's The Awakening: A Dissenting Opinion." American Literary Realism 26.2 (1994):1 18.
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
Throughout Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier, the main protagonist, experiences multiple awakenings—the process in which Edna becomes aware of her life and the constraints place on it—through her struggles with interior emotional issues regarding her true identity: the confines of marriage vs. her yearning for intense passion and true love. As Edna begins to experience these awakenings she becomes enlightened of who she truly and of what she wants. As a result, Edna breaks away from what society deems acceptable and becomes awakened to the flaws of the many rules and expected behavior that are considered norms of the time. One could argue that Kate Chopin’s purpose in writing about Edna’s inner struggles and enlightenment was to
As the novel starts out Edna is a housewife to her husband, Mr. Pontellier, and is not necessarily unhappy or depressed but knows something is missing. Her husband does not treat her well. "...looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage." She is nothing but a piece of property to him; he has no true feelings for her and wants her for the sole purpose of withholding his reputation. "He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother's place to look after children, whose on earth was it?" Mr. Pontellier constantly brings her down for his own satisfaction not caring at all how if affects Edna.
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)
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 535-625. Print.
89-106. Gilmore, Michael T. "Revolt Against Nature: The Problematic Modernism of The Awakening. " Martin 59-84. Giorcelli, Cristina.
The 19th and 20th centuries were a time period of change. The world saw many changes from gender roles to racial treatment. Many books written during these time periods reflect these changes. Some caused mass outrage while others helped to bring about change. In the book The Awakening by Kate Chopin, gender roles can be seen throughout the novel. Some of the characters follow society’s “rules” on what a gender is suppose to do while others challenge it. Feminist Lens can be used to help infer and interpret the gender roles that the characters follow or rebel against. Madame Ratignolle and Leonce Pontellier follow eaches respective gender, while Alcee Arobin follows and rebels the male gender expectations during the time period.
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.