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
She uses The Awakening as an indictment of the restrictions put on women, highlighting the gender issues during her time that were deep seated and hotly debated. Women were property, and as such had no property rights and therefore very few options apart from marriage. Most women were completely dependent on men. They were expected to keep house and raise children, though many were unsuited to the task.29 The “voluntary motherhood” movement advocated for a woman’s right to choose if and when she would have a child30, a choice that was obviously not given to Edna, considering her feelings about motherhood. Chopin created a character that objected so strongly to the obligation of motherhood that she committed suicide, a shocking contradiction to the idea that the “mother-woman”31 was the
The main question Chopin ponders in this novel is can a woman have both a marriage and children while fulfilling an independent life. Although the ending is not a very happy one, it shows the process of a woman struggling for self-survival. The Awakening shows Edna at the mercy of a devoted husband, a hot climate, a Creole lifestyle, and the restricted expectations of a particular class of Louisiana women.
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.
Gray, Jennifer B. "The Escape Of The "Sea": Ideology And "The Awakening.." Southern Literary Journal 37.1 (2004): 53-73. Academic Search Premier. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. 2nd. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994. Print.
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)
Toth, Emily. "A New Biographical Approach." The Awakening: An Authoritative Text Biographical and Historical Contexts Criticism. Ed. Margo Culley. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1994. 113 119.
Spangler, George M. "Kate Chopin's The Awakening: A Partial Dissent." Novel: A Forum on Fiction 3 (1970): 249-55.
Chopin, Kate. “The Awakening.” 1899. The Awakening and Selected Stories. New York City, NY: Penguin Group, 2003.
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.
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.
Martin, Wendy, ed. "Introduction." New Essays on The (Awakening. New York, NY: Cambridge UP, 1988.
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. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 535-625. Print.
Kate Chopin boldly uncovered an attitude of feminism to an unknowing society in her novel The Awakening. Her excellent work of fiction was not acknowledged at the time she wrote it because feminism had not yet come to be widespread. Chopin rebelled against societal norms (just like Edna) of her time era and composed the novel, The Awakening, using attitudes of characters in favor to gender, variations in the main character, descriptions and Edna's suicide to show her feminist situation. Society during Chopin's time era alleged women to be a feeble, dependent gender whose place laid nothing above mothering and housekeeping. In The Awakening, Chopin conveys the simple attitudes of society toward women mainly through her characters Leonce, Edna, Madame Ratignolle, and Madame Reisz. She uses Leonce and Madame Ratignolle to depict examples of what was considered adequate in society. In a critical essay written by Emily Toth, she states that "The Awakening is a story of what happens when a woman does not accept her place in the home. The novel moves us because it illustrates the need for women's psychological, physical, social, and sexual emancipation--the goals of feminists in the twentieth century as well as the nineteenth" (Toth). However, Chopin takes account of the opposing characters of Edna and Madame Reisz in a determination to express desires and wants concealed by the female gender.