The Awakening Feminist Analysis

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Her being is as beautiful and delicious as the sea, she realizes once she finally awakes. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening represents the society in which shames those who are deemed to be outcasts, making them the topic of question. Chopin’s society is responsible for having a set standard of women, alienating those who are subjected to oppose it,—but leaving them with a “yellow brick road” to freedom. Protagonist Edna Pontellier is the victim to this novel’s “crime” of ostracization. Edna is the prime example of how society “scopes” in on specific characteristics of women—and is bewildered to anything that is outside of its “range.” These women must meet the standard of being a “lady” or else are prone to questioning.

Women in Chopin’s society …show more content…

As Edna digs towards her own sexual desires and personal satisfaction rather than worrying about her family, her status as a women in society dissipates. Instead of championing her “job” as a family woman, she chases the satisfaction of her urges as well as—independence. Edna falls directly into Chopin’s view of “the other” within society: avant-garde women. Edna also fragments from society for not only seeking pleasure as her primary responsibility—but desiring a career in the arts: Chopin’s society follows the archaic viewpoint that women must not work. Although Chopin segregates Edna for her individuality, she also lays a path of freedom—the …show more content…

Edna’s companion throughout the novel (“speaks” to her through its beautiful sensuous sound) that also represents the symbol of the individual and freedom is her “path to independence”: the sea. Her life and solitude were expenditures for her independence; she swam too far, lost her strength, and then drowned—not, however, in Robert’s “sea of love” which she has been longing. Chopin symbolizes society through the “typical” women: having only the chore of nurturing the family and her husband, those who meet this set image are classified normal; in addition, alienation is represented (since the protagonist is female) by women—in this case Edna—who choose to fulfill their own intentions rather than putting their kin upon the

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