Character Foils In Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening'

At first, she is struck by the epitome of Creole wife that is Adele Ratignolle. Adele Ratignolle was widely considered “the embodiment of every womanly grace and charm” with “spun-gold hair...blue eyes...like nothing but sapphires...and lips like crimson fruit” (Chopin, 12). Golden hair, sapphires and crimson fruit are all products that can be owned and by using such words, Chopin is making a statement about the relationship between Adele and her husband: she is a commodity he owns. Adele is also described as being a talented pianist, yet even this is “on account of the children...because she and her husband both considered it a means of brightening the home and making it attractive” (Chopin, 27). Again, the characterization of Adele remains of the physical, the visual, the superficial through the diction of “brightening” and “attractive”. The fact that her opinion is lumped with her husband’s is also an important detail as through this passage. Chopin is demonstrating that Adele has a singular identity––as wife to a Creole––with a singular source of happiness––stemming from her children––and that if Edna were to choose this path, she would be expected to do the

Chopin uses the first hand description of Adele from Edna as a literary comparison to previous descriptions of Adele, allowing insight into Edna’s own perceptions and changing world view.

Adele doesn’t really make an inspiring or emotional impact in this novel. She is a housewife who is content fulfilling her duties. She is a static character because she shows no change or growth from the beginning to the end of the novel. It is almost like she receives a checklist from society about what she needs to do and she gladly performs those tasks.

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 novel, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, we see how much of an importance the men in Edna’s life serve as a purpose to her awakening. Chopin is known to write stories about women who are unsatisfied with their lives while living in a life that is dominated by men. Other than Edna, the main men characters are typical men of the late 19th century era. Chopin shows how these three men are diverse from one another. The Creole men are Léonce Pontellier, Edna’s husband, Robert, Edna’s mystery man number one, and Alcee, mystery man number two. Léonce, Edna’s husband, is a businessman who has no time for his family let alone his wife. Alcee comes off as carefree and does not seem to care what society thinks of him. Robert is Edna’s main mystery man who she loves but Robert doesn’t love her back. Throughout the novel, these men make Edna question herself, which lead her to her awakening. These men show how men in the late 19th century behaved. In a male dominated world, women were not allowed to do much except for be good wives and mothers to their families. Edna learned the hard way as to what it meant to be the wife of a Creole man in the Victorian era. Men expected too much of women because appearances meant everything and no man would want to have a wife who is out of line and not well behaved in public. In studying these three men in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, we see how different yet alike these men are to one another.

For a person to be awakened, he or she must go through an experience that causes a sudden enlightenment in the area surrounding them. In the fictional novel The Awakening, written by Kate Choppin, the reader is taken along on the journey of a woman by the name of Edna Pontellier, who is trying to break free of the social guidelines of her time period. Mrs. Pontellier, the wife to a wealthy business man by the name of Leonce, begins to experience change not only with her physical wants but her mental desires as well. This unheard of change that Edna is going through truly is her awakening, is well described by the title of the book, and has an impact on her loved ones around her.

Edna states, “The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude...to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation”(Chopin 17). Chopin utilizes practical uses of water to show Edna’s nonconformity and foreshadows the end of the novel. Kathryn Seidel states, “Edna begins her journey by discovering the limitations of domesticity as exemplified by the confining roles of wife and “mother-woman”; Chopin approached her novel from a background of local color and domestic fiction but with a sense of its limitations”(236). By incorporating swimming and sunbathing, Chopin reveals her underlying theme. Beginning in chapter one with the way Mr.Pontellier looks at his wife as a damaged possession after stating, “You are burnt beyond recognition”(Chopin 5). This shows how women were treated in this time period; therefore, Edna felt the power to break the social norm of objectivity of women. Towards the middle of the book, Edna experiences her first swim. The narrator states, “She turned her face seaward to gather in an impression of space and solitude which the vast expanse of water...as she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself”(Chopin 32). Edna’s first swim symbolizes her awakening moment. As she swims, she feels like she is “reaching out for the unlimited”

Chopin especially reveals the growth of Edna’s inner identity through her increasingly conflicting interactions with her husband

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,

Chopin tells of this younger woman with an older husband who runs with her intuition in search of her own mind. Another presentation of Romanticism in The Awakening is described during Edna's search for individualism when she says of her that "...no longer was she content to 'feed upon opinion' when her own soul had invited her" (124). Edna Pontellier has a desire to be her own person in her own world when she is placed in a setting that refuses to permit such an action.

Not only does Chopin use Edna and Adele’s views to contrast them, but also physically describes them as opposites. Edna is described as a sticking woman that is captivating “Mrs. Pontellier’s eyes were quick and bright; they were a yellowish brown, about the color of

In the novel The Awakening, Kate Chopin (2005) uses deep symbolism to show how the main character, Edna Pontellier, discovers her own independence in the society in which she lived. Edna was a traditional mother and wife seeking freedom and independence throughout her adult life. Chopin portrays Edna as being a rebel against her own life. The story takes place in the 1960s when women were to follow certain rules made by the society they lived in. Chopin also foreshadows the things that occur in Edna’s life through nature and death itself. Based on the many ways Chopin uses symbolic meanings through the novel, we can see the events of Edna’s life as one that rebels against society. Throughout this novel, Chopin proves that Edna’s actions

Though Yaeger unveils the “social acquiescence” underlying the romance plot as distorting what most scholars identify as Edna’s social defiance, she unearths emancipatory strategies within Chopin’s text that prove far more

In several instances, she casually slips in French phrases and words. For example, the characters are referred to by social titles and not first names such as Madame Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz. The central issue and theme is Edna's struggle with being the ideal, cookie cutter doting wife. She finds it hard to be as domestic and submissive as the women who were raised in a Creole household and community. She attempts to be a 'mother-wife" like the other women and ultimately ends up taking her own life because she despises it so much. Even though this work was published in 1899 it is still relevant today. Chopin's stories go hand in hand with modern feminism and the stigma that marriage is the ultimate goal.