Chopin: External Narration

In “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin, the paradoxical nature of Edna’s life is heroic because she

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.

Ranging from caged parrots to the meadow in Kentucky, symbols and settings in The Awakening are prominent and provide a deeper meaning than the text does alone. Throughout The Awakening by Kate Chopin, symbols and setting recur representing Edna’s current progress in her awakening. The reader can interpret these and see a timeline of Edna’s changes and turmoil as she undergoes her changes and 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

“Having added to American literature a novel uncommon in its kind as in its excellence, she deserves not to be forgotten. The Awakening, deserves to be restored and to be given its place among novels worthy of preservation”(Eble 82). Kenneth Eble is speaking of Kate Chopin in the quote above, revealing his opinion of her work. The topics mentioned by Chopin in The Awakening are highly controversial due to the time period. Nevertheless, Chopin creates an amazing structure in order to convey her message. Chopin intertwines different motifs and symbols throughout the novel in order to create meaning at the end of the novel. An important motif specific to the time period is isolation due to independence. One of the many symbols attached to this

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

A narrator, who is without a name, tells of his first hand experiences throughout the story. This is in contrast to ‘Miss Brill’ in which narrative is delivered in the third person, with the use of free indirect speech to depict the story and portray the characters. By Wells selecting a first person narrative he draws the reader closer into the character’s mind set. This gives Wells the ability to convey the primary characters full spectrum of emotional thought, from open mindedness to the conflict and fear within him. First narrative provides the reader insight to thoughts and observations therefore adding suspense of the unknowing into the gothic style.

The humanly gift of imagination is a unique power within that subconsciously is a locomotor to both the body and spirit to a person 's individual Elysium. It goes far and beyond our cognition into an exuberant fantasy molded by our wants and desires, reaching untamed worlds. Turning imagination into realism is denounced as an impossible being, but it 's in fact the awakening to our lucid dreaming. Edna Pontellier is a woman with a heart that soared beyond the horizons into a limitless world, forced into cage by the inevitable way of life. Kate Chopin through the beautifully sculpted novel “The Awakening” condemned Edna with a mindset beyond her years, finding meaning through her unsocial actions shunned by the eyes of others. Edna used her

The writer narrates the novel in third person point of view. Although the story mainly centered around Mrs.Pontellier, The Awakening is omniscient. For instance, in the first few pages Mr.Pontellier views Edna as his property (Chopin, 4), or the When Madame Ratignolle tells Robert to back off flirting with Edna considering she might find him being serious (Chopin, 50), and when Mr. Pontellier concludes that Mrs. Pontellier is perhaps mentally ill (Chopin, 169-170).These scenes show us the other characters opinions and feelings and not what just what Edna feels, they also aid in understanding Edna as a character.

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.

    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.

In "The Awakening" Kate Chopin's narrative is a critique of the ancient confines of gender roles and the sexism that comes with this cultural norm, ultimately conveying that the freedom of a woman's soul is not something that her society is ready for. The one independent-minded woman in the novel cannot live with herself because of the confines that society has trapped her in. Chopin utilizes juxtapositions between Adele and Edna, symbolic application of the sea, and diction indicative of sexism in 'The Awakening' to create this innovative critique.

Over the past seven weeks I have enjoyed many aspects of this course and have even surprised myself with my new fondness of poetry and appreciation for writing. While it is difficult to choose one literary work that stands out from the rest I would have to choose “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin. When I initially realized that it was 39 chapters long, I was not eager to take on the challenge,

The multiplicity of meanings and (re)interpretations informing critical studies of The Awakening reveal a novel ripe for deconstructionist critique. Just as Chopin evokes an image of the sea as symbolic of Edna’s shifting consciousness (“never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude,”138), likewise the deconstructionist reading of a text emphasizes fluidity over structure: “A text consists of words inscribed in and inextricable from the myriad discourses that inform it; from the point of view of deconstruction, the boundaries between any given text and that larger text we call language are always shifting,” (297). From this

    The Awakening, written by Kate Chopin, is full of ideas and understanding about human nature. In Chopin's time, writing a story with such great attention to sensual details in both men and women caused skepticism among readers and critics. However, many critics have different views with deeper thought given to The Awakening. Symbolism, the interpretation of Edna's suicide, and awakenings play important roles in the analysis of all critics.