Bird Symbolism In The Awakening

The birds are the major symbolic images from the very beginning of the novel: "A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: `Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right!'" (Chopin pp3) In The Awakening, caged birds represent Edna's entrapment. She is caged as a wife and mother; she is never expected to actually be able to think and make decisions for herself. The caged birds also symbolize the entrapment of Victorian women in general since their movements are limited by the rules of the society that they live in. Just

The stepping stones in Edna’s awakening can be seen through symbols: birds, clothes, and even the ocean. The symbols of caged birds in The Awakening represent Edna’s entrapment as a wife and mother, along with all of the other Victorian women. When Leonce is sitting by the parrots reading his newspaper, the parrot spoke, “a language which nobody understood” (Chopin 5). Edna, just like the parrot, can not be understood. Edna can not communicate her feelings with others, her feelings being the “language” that nobody

The ocean, represented in Chopin’s novel, underscores liberation through nonconformity and independence, but also destruction through its solitude and waves of uncontrollable power. For instance, when Edna embarks on a boat excursion to the Chênière Caminada for mass, Chopin reveals that Edna felt as if “she were being borne away from some anchorage which had held her fast, whose chains had been loosening...leaving her free to drift whithersoever she chose to set her sails” (Chopin 34). Thus, Edna’s first outing away from the Grand Isle serves to awaken her in the sense of sailing away from the limitations of societal norms in which she feels trapped. This is further underscored through Chopin’s symbolic use of an anchor, as it represents the heavy weight of which Edna feels burdened by societal customs. In addition, Edna reveals to Robert that she has “been seeing the waves and the white beach of Grand Isle” (Chopin 100) while he was away in Mexico. Waves are often associated with uncontrolled activity; as such, the ones of which Edna speaks of may symbolize that her rebellion against

Symbolism also plays an enormous role, birds, oceans, and sound are three different interpretations of Edna. Throughout the entire story, caged birds appear quite often resembling the trapped society of Mrs. Pontellier, it also serves as a reminder that she's caged like a bird wanting to escape and also the entrapment of women in that specific time. In the beginning, the parrot talking to Mr. Pontellier saying to leave in French represents as Edna’s

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.

Motifs in The Awakening play an extremely significant role in identifying the development of characters and contribute to the overall theme of the novel. Birds are one of the first motifs seen in the beginning of the novel starting with a caged parrot yelling “Allez vous-en! Sapristi!” which translates to “Go away! For Heaven’s sake!” This parrot represents Edna’s entrapment in the Victorian lifestyle where women are caged by their husbands and have limited freedom. Birds aren’t meant to be caged, but instead they are meant to soar free and fly, which is what Edna is attempting to do through the course of the novel. Through self discovery and exploration Edna believes that she must move to another house in order to escape her husband and responsibilities. Unfortunately, by moving to the pigeon house she is just trapped in another cage unable to free herself since she is constantly surrounded by reminders of her previous life. Birds serve to represent Edna and her struggle to break away from conventional Victorian society, which ultimately leads to her demise with the author’s final use of bird imagery: “A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water.”

She is moved by music. During that summer Edna sketches to find an artistic side to herself. She needs an outlet to express who she is. Edna feels that art is important and adds meaning to her life. After the summer is over and they are back to the city and Edna is a changed woman. She makes many steps towards independence. She stops holding "Tuesday socials", she sends her children to live in the country with their grandparents, she refuses to travel abroad with her husband, she moves out of the Lebrun house on Esplanade Street, and to earn money, she starts selling her sketches and betting the horses. She also starts a relationship with another man Alcee Arobin. He meant nothing to her emotionally but she used him for sexual pleasure. Edna evolved above her peers she did not believe that sexuality and motherhood had to be linked. The last step of her "awakening" is the realization that she can not fulfill her life in a society that will not allow her to be a person and a mother. Edna commits suicide in the ocean at Grand Isle.

The bird, the most central of Chopin's symbols, appears constantly in order to provide insight into Edna’s lack of freedom and future relationship with Mademoiselle Reisz. This is evident from the start of the novel when, “A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage… could speak… a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mocking-bird…” Here, Chopin links the “parrot hanging in a cage” to Edna’s feeling of captivity in the life she will never have. The “cage” is also symbolic to Edna’s lack of freedom in that it interferes with her self-discovery. Moreover, Chopin presents Mademoiselle Reisz, the mocking-bird, as the only character in the novel who fully understands Edna and her motives. Being misunderstood by society, Edna finally feels she has found someone who understands her. This becomes central to Chopin’s message of Edna’s initiation to a life of

	Once Edna begins to escape, however, the birds become important signs of her success in escaping and continue to foreshadow her actions. Upon hearing Mademoiselle Reisz play "Solitude", Edna envisions a free bird for the first time. She imagines "a man standing beside a desolate rock...with hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight away from him" (25). The appearance of a free bird provides an important sign of Edna's beginning freedom and success. Also, the bird leaves a hopeless and resigned man as Edna leaves Mr. Pontellier. While Edna relates her love story to Mr. Pontellier and Doctor Mendelet, she begins to show her feeling of freedom by

      In Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, the female protagonist, Edna Pontellier, learns about the world. Unfortunately for Edna, the world is defined in terms of love and marriage. This female awakening is really  "an awakening to limitations" (Bloom 43). If read as a suicide, then Edna’s last swim is a consequence of her awakening to the limitations of her femaleness in a male-dominant society. But on a metaphysical level, The Awakening's final scene can be seen as Edna's ultimate gesture in trying to grasp the essence of her being.  This essay will show that Edna's spiritual journey both begins and ends in the sea..

In “The Awakening… [Chopin] employ[s] birds as a metaphor for the entrapment the protagonist experience[s]” (Elz). The very beginning of novel it starts off with “A green and yellow parrot... [hanging] in a cage outside the door” (1) to show Edna Pontellier’s entrapment in a society that disapproves women having their independence. Edna pushes social norms aside and fights for her liberty. Further along the novel Edna gains confidence in herself and

Through this description of the ocean, Chopin not only emphasizes the constant temptation of freedom the ocean lures but also introduce a correlation that perhaps the consequences of freedom ends with one living in solitude. Chopin’s word choice to express Edna’s desire for freedom shows the coexistence of isolation and freedom as well as a warning for Edna in the future. However as Edna strives for her idea of freedom, she soon forgets this warning and continues to walk down the path of loneliness. As Edna develops her idea of a perfect life, one that is without society constraints on her action, Edna is again enveloped by the ocean and its ideals. In the scene where Edna swims far out from shore, she experiences the vastness of the sea and “her newly conquered power” to be independent as well as out of the reaches from society (Chopin 37).

Not only does the character foil between Edna and Madame Ratignolle exhibit the constraining relationship between a woman and nature, but the natural symbolism Chopin utilizes throughout the novel further develops this concept. In various instances, birds were strategically mentioned, and they symbolically represented Edna’s attempt to escape the restraints in her life. For example, in a moment of pity, Mademoiselle Reisz declared to Edna that a bird needs increasingly robust wings to fly above tradition and prejudice, and that it is a “sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to Earth (Chopin 112).” Simply, this bird intrinsically depicts Edna’s own aims to escape from her responsibilities as a mother and wife. At this point in the

Chopin uses The Awakening to show how the power of the sea allows a person (Edna) to understand his or her own meaning to how their life should be lived and why. A person’s freedom is being able to live out his or her interpretation on how life should be lived to the fullest. Before Edna started to discover herself, she was stuck between wanting to explore herself and her desires more fully and the truths about the role of Victorian women. It’s not until the first major event in her awakening in which she finally enables herself to have a deeper, more meaningful form of self-awareness. The baptismal swim in the sea allowed Edna to discover this personal interpretation. At

The Awakening by Kate Chopin follows a common theme of literature during the early 1900s authors wrote about women’s suffrage. She uses Edna in the novel to show how women were viewed in this particular time period. Peggy Skaggs alludes that Chopin’s life experiences have affected her writing: “Her life and experiences as a women apparently affirmed the truths she expressed about Feminism and her development as a literary artist