In the novel The Awakening, the main protagonist Edna represents the character that undergoes change, and has the awakening as referred to in the title. In the first section of the novel, Edna is unsure of her thoughts and actions regarding marriage, her role in the world, and her life in general. In chapter 6, she has an awakening, shown when the narrator announces, “A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her, - the light which, showing the way, forbids it” (17). This quote illustrates a major theme in Edna’s life and in the novel, which is change. After chapter 6, the reader and Edna both realize Edna is dissatisfied with her marriage and the limited, conservative lifestyle it allows. This idea is amplified thoroughly later in…
The awakening follows Edna Pontellier, a housewife unhappy with her position in society. Due to these unfair expectations of a woman, she sacrifices her chances for a career in the arts. Edna is a gifted artist but her position as a female limits her from pursuing the things she enjoys most. However, she is never shown to be happy about this – in fact, we often witness Ednas disatification. This is only one example where her choice to sacrifice the things she loves for her status of a woman impacts her dramatically. Being a housewife is…
Student paper (p. 3): The Awakening is about the story of a young wife who is awakened to her sexual needs that cannot be fulfilled within the confines of her conventional marriage (Clark, 2008). Nevertheless, Edna Pontellier is awakened to a yearning for freedom, a relation to and understanding of herself that she has not been aware of missing in the past. In the text, Edna identifies with the masculine interest of her father who the narrator remarks had managed or coerced his wife into her early grave. However, when Edna is awakened to the hidden potentialities she possesses, it is the yearning for freedom and the desire to overcome the limitations imposed on her from outside that determine her actions.…
Edna is realizing her position as a human being and recognizes her relations with others in the world. She is having an individual self-discovery or sexual desire and her intellectual pursuits.…
In conclusion, Edna Pontellier has demonstrated qualities of a modern woman through her feministic interpretations on life. Regardless of how others perceived her role as a woman to be, Edna led her life searching for self-fulfillment through her persistent sexual awakening, unorthodox view of what it meant to be a mother, and her ability to break the barriers of societal conformities such as marriage. It was her unknowing journey to modernity through her rebellion that eventually lead to her supposed suicide after Robert left her. However, in a way, it was through this, that Edna Pontellier finally escaped the social conformities that enslaved her previously.…
In “The Awakening”, Edna Pontellier is known as Mrs. Pontellier for the first part of the book. The book is based in a time period where women had no say and were just “mother-women”, who are kind of like a nun. There were many different types of women in the victorian era but none of them had a lot of rights or not much of a say.…
The expectations of tradition coupled with the limitations of law gave women of the late 1800s very few opportunities for individual expression, not to mention independence. Expected to perform their domestic duties and care for the health and happiness of their families, Victorian women were prevented from seeking the satisfaction of their own wants and needs (SparkNotes Editors). This book is started as Edna, her husband, and their two small boys been in a vacation on Grand Isle, in a resort that was managed by Madame Lebrun, and her sons Robert and Victor. But basically it’s really only Edna and her two sons since her husband Leonce, which is a very successful businessman, works in the city during the week and joins them only on weekends. So Edna mostly spends much of her time with her friend, Adele, but eventually begins seeing Robert Lebrun more and more frequently. But later she founds out that his leaving for mexico the next day and he has yet not told her and she got devastated after finding out this news by herself . When Edna and her family returns to New Orleans after the summer , she begins moving more and more away from her traditional role, as she attempts to live life on her own terms.…
An oppressive, patriarchal society, by its very nature, makes it difficult for women to express themselves and take charge of what they want to do with their lives. In The Awakening, a novella by Kate Chopin, Edna Pontellier realizes she can no longer cope with this subjugated type of lifestyle and metaphorically awakens to the notion that she can transform herself from powerless to independent. Madame Adele Ratignolle, a motherly figure who embodies many of the traditional feminine roles of the time, is the impetus for several of these “awakenings.” Throughout many encounters leading these “awakenings,” Adele sparks and drives Edna towards her epiphanies of self-empowerment and awareness of her inner…
In The Awakening, the heroine Edna Pontellier tries to wake from the accustomed domesticity of a housewife to become an actual being in the late 19th century American society. For her realizations have led her to various pioneering decisions as a wife and as a mother, it seems in reality the “awakening” does not need to an actual liberation of her life. Afterall, is the “awakening” a tragedy or comedy for her?…
In Kate Chopin’s book The Awakening, the title holds a significant but complex meaning. Throughout the book, the main character, Edna Pontellier, experiences various awakenings in different ways; she has an awakening of herself as an artist when she tries to paint, a realisation that she can appreciate music, a realisation of what love is, along with realisations of who she is and how unfulfilling her life is. Edna also experiences freedom for the first time; she comprehends deeper understanding of how she is her own person and how she is not bound by other people’s expectations. These understandings are awakenings to Edna, who seems to have lived much of her life without more poignant thought or defiance. Chopin uses this proliferation of…
There are many different types of women portrayed in The Awakening. The goal of this paper is to compare and contrast the women in the book to the women during the turn of the nineteenth century and the society's reaction to the novel.. The novel shows the social constraints of women in the Victorian era. During this time, women were supposed to be docile, domestic creatures, whose main concerns in life were to be the raising of their children and submissiveness to their husbands.…
Edna is a married woman vacationing at her summer home with her family. Edna’s husband conforms to gender stereotypes of this time and is devoted more to his work than to his family, and believes he holds dominance over his wife solely because he is male. In the first chapter of the novel Mr. Pontellier leaves Edna for Klein’s Hotel and doesn’t return for hours. This is the first of many instanced when Edna is isolated from her husband for long periods of time. Edna quickly becomes rebellious toward her husband. In her time alone she realizes that she doesn’t need him and can be perfectly happy on her own. Edna relishes in her first experience of talking back to her husband enjoying the power she suddenly feels over…
Because the home is a private piece of property, the owner is allowed to decorate it however he, she, or they want, imbuing it with personality and clues as to how they live when alone. The invitation of society into the home allows them to judge one’s personal aspect of the self, and experiences linger. As Edna changed into a freer being, pushing away from societal values, her previous home became a representation of company. Because of this, she moved away to escape into the isolation of a new house. Society urges one to conform. Only through escape from it—isolation—that one may break free from its oppressiveness.…
Edna was a women of her own mind, she was always enjoying life for the most part, the views of the beach, and the love she got from her family and friends. She was a peculiar mother though, it was very potent that she was loved her kids, but throughout the story she would often try to get rid of her kids and pass them onto someone else for days at a time without regret and without a sense of missing them. Mrs. Pontellier was strange, she didn’t marry her husband out of love like she thought she did and she never really had the urge to want him, she loved him but not in the wat she should. Throughout the plot of the book she started thinking of women’s rights; like why it wasn’t okay for women to have their own opinion or why wasn’t it okay…
‘The Awakening’ is also a novel that took place in the late 1800's when women's liberation was never heard of. In this era, women were supposed to find happiness in serving their husbands and taking care of the children. There were no other options within the restrictive boundaries of marriage, and divorce was never an alternative. Women's lives were austere and most accepted this but Edna did not. She believed that life was about more than just doing what was expected of her and she wanted time for herself. The theme of marriage in Edith Wharton’s ‘The House of Mirth’ and Kate Chopin’s ‘The Awakening’ is closely related to theme of society and class in the way that the main reasons for marriage in the novels aren’t for love but for gaining financial stability or to climb the social ladder.…