Critical Analysis: Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" Essay

The ending of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is both controversial and thought provoking. Many see Edna Pontellier’s suicide as the final stage of her “awakening”, and the only way that she will ever be able to truly be free. Edna’s suicide, however, is nothing more than her final attempt to escape from her life. Edna Pontellier’s life has become too much for her to handle, and by committing suicide she is simply escaping the oppression she feels from her marriage, the suppression she feels from her children, and the failure of her relationship with Robert.

In the movie, we are left wondering how this man came to be in Edna's world. The movie does not show the development of the relationship at all. It does not speak of the pain that both Edna and Robert have to endure. In the novel, Robert loves Edna deeply, but he tries to deny his love because she is a married woman. It is what drives him to Mexico and back again. He says, "I couldn't help loving you if you were ten times his wife; but so long as I . . . kept away I could help telling you so." (Chopin 142) The movie does not address the pain and indecision that paralyze Robert and Edna. It treats their relationship as a lack of self-control based on lust and the heat of the moment.

In Kate Chopin's, The Awakening, Edna Pontellier came in contact with many different people during a summer at Grand Isle. Some had little influence on her life while others had everything to do with the way she lived the rest of her life. The influences and actions of Robert Lebrun on Edna led to her realization that she could never get what she wanted, which in turn caused her to take her own life.

In the essay, Chopin's The Awakening, Platizky writes that “while one could argue she was just shy or introverted, Edna's sweeping passions later in the novel suggest the introversion may have been imposed.” (Platizky, Roger). While this is true that Edna has sweeping passions later in the novel, it is not correlated to Edna wanting to block something from her memory, such as sexual violence. While someone could insist that Edna’s mood swings are suggesting the protagonist “is trying to block something more than just her realization that she is unhappy in her present marriage” (Platizky), that information is extremely faulty. Instead, Edna’s mood swings deal with the oppression of the patriarchal society that women were thrown into during this time period. Each woman was supposed to lack individuality and obey the men, especially in the Creole Catholic society. Edna’s lack of cooperation towards this norm shows up often in The Awakening.

In the iconic debated novel “The Awakening”, Kate Chopin’s novel takes place in the Victorian Era, which is in the 19th- century, similarly the novel was published in 1899. Edna is depicted as a woman longing for more, a woman who was looking for more than just a life of complacency and living in the eyes of society. The story uses Edna to exemplify the expectations of women during this era. For example, a woman’s expression of independence was considered immoral. Edna was expected to conform to the expectations of society but the story reveals Edna’s desires which longed for independence in a state of societal dominance. Throughout The Awakening, Chopin’s most significant symbol,

contrary, she knows what she wants her life to hold, and she leaps for it.

In Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening a wife and a mother of two, Edna Pontellier, discovers her desires as a woman to live life to the fullest extent and to find her true self. Eventually, her discovery leads to friction between friends, family, and the dominant values of society. Through Chopin's use of Author’s craft and literary elements, the readers have a clear comprehension as to what the author is conveying.

To what extent does Edna Pontellier, in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, mark a departure from the female characters of earlier nineteenth-century American novels

In the story about Edna Pontellier a major theme is her omitted self discovery. In the story we can see how Chopin uses style, tone and content to make the reader understand how it was for a person challenging many of the beliefs of the society at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Awakening by Kate Chopin introduces the reader to the life of Edna Pontellier, a woman with an independent nature searching for her true identity in a patriarchal society that expects women to be nothing more than devoted wives and nurturing mothers.

    One theme apparent in Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, is the consequence of solitude when independence is chosen over conformity. The novel's protagonist, Edna Pontellier, is faced with this consequence after she embarks on a journey of self-discovery. "As Edna's ability to express herself grows, the number of people who can understand her newfound language shrinks" (Ward 3). Edna's awakening from a conforming, Victorian wife and mother, into an emotional and sexual woman takes place through the use of self-expression in three forms: emotional language, art, and physical passion.

Thank you to all the students, professors, and my coach for your support, encouragement, and feedback. As I previously stated in my introductory post, I love read but hate to write, which was probably not the best words to say entering an English class, but with your support, not only have I made it through this course, but I have also enjoyed the journey.

Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening depicts a conflict between a woman’s inner desires and society’s standards. As the plot develops, the protagonist, Edna, has an increasing self-awareness that is termed in the story as an “awakening.” Once awakened, Edna begins a search to discover and define her self-identity and shed off the one placed on her by society. As Edna becomes impulsive and follows her desires, her self-awareness progresses into emotional and sexual awareness. She begins to realize that not only does she desire autonomy, but she also wants a lover and someone whom she can form an emotional bond with. However, as her awakening progresses it becomes clear that she cannot obtain both of these desires and, in the end, that she can either stay as her husband’s possession or live a life of autonomy and social isolation like Madam Reisz. Instead, Edna chooses suicide. Through this action, she is liberating herself by creating a new path, her own path, and avoiding the ones that were set for her by society. Thus, Edna's suicide is a glorious moment in which she is able to free herself from society's constraints and definition of “woman” and “mother,” making her an artist, and through which her “awakening” is complete leaving her in a state of mental clarity. Through Edna’s suicide, Chopin sends the message that for a woman to have the ability to become an artist and leave a fruitful result she must be able to define her own path, one not shaped by any other person.

After reading The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, it is clear that the text is much more naturalist rather than feminist. The author uses Edna Pontellier as the antagonist, tempting the conventional laws that govern her life while using her surrounding citizens who are depicted as ideal citizens following the conventional societal laws of the Victorian Era.

Kate Chopin uses these incidences with Edna’s lovers to express Edna’s spark of feminism. Edna first begins to realize that she is a human being, and that she has feelings too. The way Edna tells Robert that she is not a possession show that she is fed up with being treated like a piece of meat. This is the rise of her feminism; she finally started thinking about her feelings.