Love In The Awakening

The theme of The Awakening is centered on Edna’s journey of individual identification and independence. Chopin condemns gender roles and pleads to the public to look at women as equals and not just commodities to be married off. Women should have all the

Commonly explored throughout her works, the idea of marriage inhibiting a woman’s freedom is the driving force behind Kate Chopin’s contextual objections to propriety. In particular, The Awakening and “The Story of an Hour” explore the lives of women seeking marital liberation and individuality. Mrs. Chopin, who was raised in a matriarchal household, expresses her opposition to the nineteenth century patriarchal society while using her personal experiences to exemplify her feminist views.

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,

Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening, introduces a “solitary soul” who fights for her identity in a society where statuses are defined and given. Edna Pontellier’s path to her awakened self is not a program, but rather a process that unfortunately results in death. Although societal influences limit the boundary for her feminine position, her inner struggle for freedom prompts her actions to appear impulsively sporadic and self-destructive in the midst of domesticity. Once she sampled the thrill and fear created by the ocean’s waves, she abandons her motherly duties, publically defies her husband, and chases a forbidden romance with Robert Lebrun. When that endeavor unexpectedly fails, she becomes devastated.

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.

Kate Chopin's The Awakening is truly a novel that stands out from the rest. From the moment it was published, it has been caused women to examine their beliefs. The fact that The Awakening was shunned when first published, yet now taught in classrooms across the country is proof that The Awakening is full of rebellious and controversial ideas.

Chopin's The Awakening is full of symbolism.  Rather than hit the reader on the head with blunt literalism, Chopin uses symbols to relay subtle ideas.  Within each narrative segment, Chopin provides a symbol that the reader must fully understand in order to appreciate the novel as a whole.  I will attempt to dissect some of the major symbols and give possible explanations as to their importance within the text.

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.

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 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.

   Reading through all of the different criticism of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening has brought about ideas and revelations that I had never considered during my initial reading of the novel.  When I first read the text, I viewed it as a great work of art to be revered.  However, as I read through all of the passages, I began to examine Chopin’s work more critically and to see the weaknesses and strengths of her novel.  Reading through others' interpretations of her novel has also brought forth new concepts to look at again.

    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.

The story, The Awakening, is about Edna Pontellier’s internal conflict between her desire for independence and her need to remain a high-class member of society. When away on summer vacation Edna has the realization that she has control of her own life and begins to focus on her self and not what others think. During her awakening, Edna is faced with much resilience from her husband and friends and instead of becoming someone she is not, Edna Pontellier ends her own life as she sees it is her only option. The author, Kate Chopin, uses many characters to exemplify the conflicting ideals emerging in Edna; particularly Madame Ratignolle acts as a foil to Edna’s newfound persona, instead symbolizing the conservation of a traditional

“By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can't convince myself that I am (216)”

Once a week, the fan runs away from home and attends the stadium. Flags flicker, rattles sound, rockets, drums, rain snakes and paper cut; the city disappears, the routine is forgotten, there is only one existing location, the temple. In this sacred space, the only religion that does not have atheists exhibits its divinities. Although the fan can contemplate the miracle, more comfortably, on the TV screen, he prefers to undertake the pilgrimage to this place where he can see his angels in flesh and blood, fighting a duel against the demons of the day and explains, “ How will you know what love is if you never became a fan of a club. How will you know what pain is if the defender never broke your tibia and fibula and you were in a slide