Essay on Analysis of Edna Pontellier

Many times however, her rebellion is seen as selfish childishness to others. Breaking the rules and finding her true happiness is what awakens Edna Pontellier and makes her different from the rest. She rebels against society by thinking differently, finding independence, doing what she wants without obeying her husband, moving out to her new "pigeon-house", and taking part in two adulterous affairs. Her climatic finale, her suicide, is her ultimate act of rebellion, not giving the ways of the world, her decision to finally be free. ‘‘She went on and on. She remembered the night she swam far out, and recalled the terror that seized her at the fear of being unable to regain the shore. She did not look back now, but went on and on, thinking of the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed when a little child, believing that it had no beginning and no end.’’ (Chopin, 120) All her rebellious actions are what make Edna such a controversial, yet influential woman till this

After returning from vacation, Edna is a changed woman. When her husband and children are gone, she moves out of the house and purses her own ambitions. She starts painting and feeling happier. “There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day” (Chopin 69). Her sacrifice greatly contributed to her disobedient actions.

Throughout Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier undergoes several episodes of bipolar behavior through her activities and her family life that leads to her suicide. This analysis outlines the externalizations of her radical thoughts as a married women and how they contrast to the contemporary women of this era.

    In the novel The Awakening, Kate Chopin tells of Edna Pontellier's struggle with fate. Edna Pontellier awakens from a slumber only to find that her life is displeasing, but these displeasing thoughts are not new to Edna. The actions taken by Edna Pontellier in the novel The Awakening clearly determine that she is not stable. The neglect of her duties as a wife and mother and as a woman of society are all affected by her mental state. Her choices to have affairs and disregard her vow of marriage represent her impaired judgment. The change in her attitude and interests becomes quite irresponsible, and that change along with her final decision to commit suicide tell the reader that Edna

“It was not despair, but it seemed to her as if life were passing by, leaving its promises broken and unfulfilled” wrote Kate Chopin in her book The Awakening. Chopin is describing her main character’s unhappiness with her life. Edna Pontellier, the main character, decides to chase her passions and live independently instead of living with the feeling that her life is just passing by. In doing so, Edna Pontellier avoids her responsibilities as a wife, mother, and a respectful woman in society and as a result, her relationships with her husband, children, and friends are ruined.

In Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening, the main character, Edna Pontellier surrenders something extremely important: her life. She becomes very self-aware and secretly stands for women being independent from common gender roles and expectations, later realizing that society wants the exact opposite. This highlights several of Edna’s values, including her freedom, her art, and her sexuality.Throughout the novel, Edna Pontellier finds herself being held back because of her family. She is expected to devote all of her time and energy to her two children and husband. The audience should gather that Edna is very unhappy with her life as a mother and wife. In fact, Chopin uses symbolism to show just this. At the

Aside from Edna Pontellier acting selfish towards her husband, she also put herself before her young children. Mrs. Pontellier’s lack of responsibility for her kids was not similar to most mothers of that time, whose children were usually their whole world. Mrs. Pontellier does not take care of her children and even does not realize that one of her children has a high fever to which Mr. Pontellier says “If it was not a mother’s place to look after her children, whose on earth was it?” (Chopin 4). Chopin describes with that quote how the mothers were seen as the primary and only caretakers of the children during that time and how Edna Pontellier does not wish to care for her kids. Madame Adele Ratignolle, who was Edna Pontellier’s complete opposite, was a beautiful, caring mother and wife.

Kate Chopin uses dynamic characters to help create Edna Pontillier. By using Mr. Pontillier, Edna’s children, and Madame Ratignolle to contrast Edna; and Robert, Madame Raisz, and Arobin as supporting characters to Edna’s untraditional ambitions Kate Chopin produces an independent, unconventional woman. While some characters contrast to Edna all of the characters in The Awakening help to illuminate Edna’s opposition to Creole tradition. Without the use of supporting and contrasting characters Edna would have never been able to fly above tradition.

Contrary to what one would expect, the first person introduced is not the main character, Edna, but rather her husband Leonce Pontellier. True to form, Kate Chopin deliberately placed Mr. Pontellier as the first character to establish alluding to his ownership and power of in the life and relationship of Edna as it was formal to consider a woman by her husband, thus donning his name and his title time period. Throughout the story, the narrator

In the novel, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Edna is introduced as a respectable woman living in the late 1800’s. She is married to Leonce Pontellier and has two children. While on a vacation, she starts to be conscious of her sexual desires toward a young man, Robert. She does not only unleashed her sexual desires she also find the courage to break any social barriers that oblige her to fulfill her role as a wife and a mother. Edna is against any of society’s structures of motherhood that defines her as the wife of Leonce and the mother of her sons. But she has never found who she is as an individual which brings out her first inwardly questioning of who is Edna Pontellier? She goes on a journey to found out. During that journey, she has conflict between “ that outward existence which conforms, the inward like that questions”. Meaning that by looking at her you would think everything is fine but inside she wonders about the rights and wrongs in her life and what would be the consequences if she did not meet those requirements. Her being married and having children conforms the society’s expectations in Edna’s time but she is thinks about breaking free of this life and finding her independence and happiness. She continually questions that idea whether

In The Awakening, Kate Chopin describes the tale and life of Edna, now in her late twenties, as she coming to the realization that she is not entirely pleased with her current life and is not particularly excited to see where it’s going. She’s aware that will never attain a future that will ease her of her sadness and make her life feel significant in any way. She is very much aware that she is filling a role that society expects of her and feels that she is losing her own independence, or at least what was there to begin with. Edna is a wife and mother of two. She spends most of her time with her friend Adele who is constantly reminding her of her duties and expectations as a mother and wife.

During a character’s development, past events are a huge factor in how they grow and change. Edna Pontellier is the character in Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening that goes through this change. The book’s overall purpose was to show how women in this time period started to rebel against the societal expectations and gender roles that were commonplace. Mrs. Pontellier’s struggle to become an independant woman and the novel’s overall meaning is directly affected by the experiences she had with her husband prior to the book's beginning and how they changed drastically throughout the book.

As she begins to develop romantic feelings for Robert, Edna ¨recognized the symptoms of infatuation which she had felt incipiently as a child (Chopin 61).¨ This child-like fondness for Robert in spite of her marriage to Mr. Pontellier exposes Edna´s urge to disregard the societal label of wedlock that shackles her to one man and inhibits her from achieving independence. No matter how deeply her inner spirit demands more than what her marriage has to offer, she will continue to be detained by ¨a responsibility which she had blindly assumed and for which Fate had not fitted her. (Chopin 25)¨ The repetition of Edna being depicted as a child also brought attention to the fact that she wasn't ready for maternal responsibility. She never felt especially attached to her kids, and was more worried about helping herself grow as a person than raising her boys.

The role model woman was the “mother-woman”. Chopin defines the mother-woman as “They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteems it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels” (14). The author illustrates this image of the “role model woman” to show her audience what Edna contrasted against. Edna did not feel this way towards her children nor her husband. Their society made it seem as if women were only meant to be wives and mothers, of course, Edna desired more. She wanted to love freely without being bonded to one person or being held back by responsibilities without judgment. This is supported when it is said ”Conditions would some way adjust themselves, she felt; but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself” (Chopin, 133). Due to the fact that Mrs.Pontellier felt this way she began to defy society’s rules and do as she pleased. Of course, eventually she became exhausted with constantly trying to tend to her desire to break away from all judgment and restraints. “Exhaustion was pressing upon and overpowering her” (Chopin, 190). This fatigue of effort pushed Edna to her ultimate breaking point and forced her to commit

Her awakening is important because in 1899, women did not have autonomy; their main purpose was domesticity. The church and patriarchy reined over women who were the property of their husbands and considered inferior to men with no sexual desire. Chopin presents Mr. Pontellier as a perfect specimen of late nineteenth century patriarchy. Some women thrive in this culture as Chopin demonstrates through Mrs. Ratignolle. However, for many women, like Edna this world was suffocating. The natural reaction to this oppression is feminism, but Chopin does not preach feminism in her novel.