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In Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”, the sea serves as an overarching symbol that pervades the novel, elucidating both the inner and outer lives of the characters, particularly the protagonist, Edna Pontellier. The sea is a physical representation of Edna Pontellier’s inner turmoil as she awakens to the realization of herself as an independent being, and how that being relates to the wider world around her; as “a certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her” (Chopin 14). It is in the embrace of the sea that Edna’s awakening, and her transformation, is completed. For Edna, the sea embodies to the polarities of her struggle. It is the ultimate lover; in its murky depths she finds solace, solitude, a sensual touch and the calming antidote to her mental anguish. The sea is where Edna can retreat from the world she knows into the world that she is discovering as she awakens to the contours of her own soul. The sea is also terrifying, overwhelming and confining and Edna must learn to conquer her fears of it. Finally, lulled by the silent rhythms of the sea, Edna is at last able to hear her own interior monologue and take control of her life. Chopin, like Mark Twain with his classic American novel, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, finds in the sea – or the river, in Twain’s case – a perfect stand-in for her protagonist’s desires and fears. Like Edna, Huck Finn struggles to find his place within the constraints of society and longs for the freedom and solace of the open river. While Huck embodies the point of view of an adolescent boy and Edna, a grown woman, both seek the freedom to be defined on their own terms.
Kate Chopin both opens and closes the novel with the sea: “The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whi...
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...voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.” The sea mimics not only Edna’s agitation, but also the sensual touch of Edna’s illicit lover, Robert. However, Chopin’s sea also has a power all its own, mysterious and dangerous. “…the stretch of water behind her assumed the aspect of a barrier which her unaided strength would never be able to overcome.” (Chopin 28) The lure of water, of nature, is also echoed by Mark Twain in his classic novel, “Huckleberry Finn.” For the child, the woman in strict society, the runway slave, both Chopin and Twain suggest that water provides a passageway to another way of life, physically, emotionally, and mentally. Water is the force of nature powerful enough to break the chains from Edna’s imprisonment, from which, once awakened, Edna can never return.
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.
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.
Sacrifices can define one’s character; it can either be the highest dignity or the lowest degradation of the value of one’s life. In The Awakening, Kate Chopin implicitly conveys the sacrifice Edna Pontellier makes in the life which provides insight of her character and attributions to her “awakening.” She sacrificed her past of a lively and youthful life and compressed it to a domestic and reserved lifestyle of housewife picturesque. However, she meets multiple acquaintances who help her express her dreams and true identity. Mrs. Pontellier’s sacrifice established her awakening to be defiant and drift away from the societal role of an obedient mother, as well as, highlighting the difference between society’s expectations of women and women’s
Leonce Pontellier, the husband of Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, becomes very perturbed when his wife, in the period of a few months, suddenly drops all of her responsibilities. After she admits that she has "let things go," he angrily asks, "on account of what?" Edna is unable to provide a definite answer, and says, "Oh! I don't know. Let me along; you bother me" (108). The uncertainty she expresses springs out of the ambiguous nature of the transformation she has undergone. It is easy to read Edna's transformation in strictly negative terms‹as a move away from the repressive expectations of her husband and society‹or in strictly positive terms‹as a move toward the love and sensuality she finds at the summer beach resort of Grand Isle. While both of these moves exist in Edna's story, to focus on one aspect closes the reader off to the ambiguity that seems at the very center of Edna's awakening. Edna cannot define the nature of her awakening to her husband because it is not a single edged discovery; she comes to understand both what is not in her current situation and what is another situation. Furthermore, the sensuality that she has been awakened to is itself not merely the male or female sexuality she has been accustomed to before, but rather the sensuality that comes in the fusion of male and female. The most prominent symbol of the book‹the ocean that she finally gives herself up to‹embodies not one aspect of her awakening, but rather the multitude of contradictory meanings that she discovers. Only once the ambiguity of this central symbol is understood can we read the ending of the novel as a culmination and extension of the themes in the novel, and the novel regains a...
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.
Kate Chopin's The Awakening begins set in Grande Isle which is the summer get-away for a few families of New Orleans "upper-class". It is a community of cottages owned by the Lebrun family. Edna Pontellier and her husband Leonce summer there with there two children. This is the setting where Edna also develops a close relationship with Robert Lebrun. He is one of Madame Lebrun's sons who helps her run the cottages for the Pontellier's and the Ratingnolle's. The book begins and ends with Edna and her attraction to the water. Throughout the story water plays a symbolic part in the unfolding of Edna and her relationship to Robert and also her awakening to a new outlook on life along with an independence that takes her away from her family and the socially constraining life in which she no longer can see herself a part of.
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
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 535-625. Print.
Ranging from caged parrots to the meadow in Kentucky, symbols and settings in The Awakening are prominent and provide a deeper meaning than the text does alone. Throughout The Awakening by Kate Chopin, symbols and setting recur representing Edna’s current progress in her awakening. The reader can interpret these and see a timeline of Edna’s changes and turmoil as she undergoes her changes and awakening.
In her article, Maria Anastasopoulou writes how ‘’Edna…is an individual who undergoes a change of consciousness that is designated by the concept of the awakening in the title of the novel’’ (19). The novel, as Anastosopoulou continues, is about the ‘’emerging individuality of a woman who refuses to be defined by the prevailing stereotype of passive femininity’’ (20). At the beginning, Chopin writes how her husband looked at Edna ‘’as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage’’ (4). Edna accepts this submissive position, unlike Margaret. She goes about her life rather passively, a subordinate to her husband. Her first awakening into a defiant, back-boned character, begins in chapter three. ‘’It was strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood’’ (15) is how Chopin describes the stirring of her awakening. When she looks out, the sea is described as a ‘’seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamouring, murmuring-‘’ (34) creature. A symbol of her soul, it was now rising. Like Margaret Hale, she had resisted social normal, but, unlike Margaret, Edna was quiet about her beliefs. The more Edna becomes her true self, the more atmospheric the novel becomes. Chopin differs from other novels in the way the novel develops from realism to more of an atmospheric
The imagery of the ocean at Grand Isle and its attributes symbolize a force calling her to confront her internal struggles, and find freedom. Chopin uses the imagery of the ocean to represent the innate force within her soul that is calling to her. "The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in a maze of inward contemplation." (p.14) Through nature and its power, Edna, begins to find freedom in her soul and then returns to a life in the city where reside the conflicts that surround her. Edna grew up on a Mississippi plantation, where life was simple, happy, and peaceful. The images of nature, which serve as a symbol for freedom of the soul, appear when she speaks of this existence. In the novel, she remembers a simpler life when she was a child, engulfed in nature and free: "The hot wind beating in my face made me think - without any connection that I can trace - of a summer day in Kentucky, of a meadow that seemed as big as the ocean to the very little girl walking through the grass, which was higher than her waist.
The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace (Chopin 25).
Kate Chopin's The Awakening is a literary work full of symbolism. Birds, clothes, houses and other narrative elements are powerful symbols which add meaning to the novel and to the characters. I will analyze the most relevant symbols presented in Chopin's literary work.
The sea is at fault for Enda’s progression to her self-discovery as she selfishly submits to her consciousness and becomes independent. Enda’s practical uses of the sea, demonstrates her nonconformity and therefore foreshadows her suicide at the end of the novel. As she swims, the water imagery associated with the sea symbolizes empowerment, allowing Enda as she gains independence, to not only gain control of herself, but defy against society’s expectations.
During the summer of Edna's awakening, the sea's influence increases as she learns how to swim, an event which holds much more significance that her fellow vacationers realize. “To her friends, she has accomplished a simple feat; to Edna, she has accomplished a miracle” (Showalter 114). She has found a peace and tranquility in swimming which gives her the feeling of freedom. The narrator tells us that as she swims, "she seem[s] to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself" (Chopin 74). She sees the freedom t...