Sexism In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

She leaves the care of her children to her grandmother, abandoning them and her husband when she leaves to live in the pigeon-house. To her, leaving her old home with Léonce is very important to her freedom. Almost everything in their house belonged to him, so even if he were to leave, she would still feel surrounded by his possessions. She never fully becomes free of him until she physically leaves the house. That way, Edna has no ties whatsoever to that man. Furthermore, Edna indulges in more humanistic things such as art and music. She listens to Mademoiselle Reisz’s playing of the piano and feels the music resonate throughout her body and soul, and uses it as a form of escapism from the world. Based on these instances, Edna acts almost like a very young child, completely disregarding consequences and thinking only about what they want to do experience most at that moment. However, to the reader this does not necessarily appear “bad”, but rather it is seen from the perspective of a person who has been controlled by others their entire life and wishes to break free from their grasp. In a way, she is enacting a childlike and subconscious form of revenge by disobeying all known social constructs of how a woman should talk, walk, act, and interact with others.

The reader thinks Edna might just be frustrated with her husband. As the novel shifts to New Orleans, it is clear that she has changed. Edna starts to feel motivated to take action. Finally the setting comes back to Grand Isle, and it is the climax of Edna’s awakening. It is also where she drowns herself. Nobody know for sure whether it was intentional or not since Chopin said, “Even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life—that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions”(Chopin 58).

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.

The thoughts and feelings circulating through Edna Pontellier help the reader better understand her character and how she changes throughout the book. For Example, Kate Chopin writes, “The years that are gone seem like dreams—if one might go on sleeping and dreaming—but to wake up and find—oh! well! Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.” CHAPTER 38. Saying that it is better to suffer rather than to go through life unconsciously is a very important theme in this novel because that is what Edna Pontellier's awakening is all about. Kate Chopin uses this quote because Edna would rather suffer with the wisdom she has gained, rather than going through life tending to her husband's and children's every need. Edna is going against her womanly duties and is again becoming independent. This is what

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”

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.

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

This is the point in the story where Edna starts listening to her voices inside her gives into her inner desires. She continues to struggle with the fact that she married out of convenience and she has two sons that she really does not want to mother as well as the fact that she loves being an artist. In chapter x, Edna goes to the sea only to realize that all her swimming lesson had finally paid off that summer and she was swimming. Chopin describes this even like a baby finally getting enough confidence to walk and the baby walks realizing its own strength and power. While swimming, she soon gets tired and has quick feeling overcome her of the possibility of drowning but quickly swims back to shore. She has conquered her greatest fear and now feels like a new woman that is no longer afraid of her true feelings. Edna’s affair with Robert continues and he eventually leaves Grand Isle and her and her family returns home.

In the essay, Chopin's The Awakening, Platizky writes that “while one could argue she was just shy or introverted, Edna's sweeping passions later in the novel suggest the introversion may have been imposed.” (Platizky, Roger). While this is true that Edna has sweeping passions later in the novel, it is not correlated to Edna wanting to block something from her memory, such as sexual violence. While someone could insist that Edna’s mood swings are suggesting the protagonist “is trying to block something more than just her realization that she is unhappy in her present marriage” (Platizky), that information is extremely faulty. Instead, Edna’s mood swings deal with the oppression of the patriarchal society that women were thrown into during this time period. Each woman was supposed to lack individuality and obey the men, especially in the Creole Catholic society. Edna’s lack of cooperation towards this norm shows up often in The Awakening.

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.

She married Leonce not because she loved him but because she could not refuse his admiration and persistence. This marriage thrusts Edna into a foreign culture. She questions her role as a mother because she is different from the typical Creole "mother-woman." Edna defies the central perception that women are mothers first

There are many other areas of Edna's story while illustrate the rebellious ideas that she represents. For example, her view of religion is very controversial for that time period. Throughout the story, we can see that Edna had no tolerance for the religious practices that were held so dear to the rest of society (Klein 3). It is not surprising that Edna refuses to "worship" any higher power, since we have also seen that she refuses to hold even her family to any higher regard (Klein 4). Additionally, Edna's attitude towards art builds on the unconventional themes of the story (Klein 6). Edna is told by Mademoiselle Reisz that ""o be an artist... you must possess the courageous soul... the brave soul. The soul that dares and defies" (Chopin 115). This seems indicative of the very soul that Edna strives to possess in the story. Her quest to become an artist seems tied to her quest to break from the conventions of society because of this definition. Edna's reverence for art and the values that it seems to be connected with make her personality even more unconventional in the terms of the society that she lived in.

Throughout “The Awakening”, Edna is immersed in a constant clash with society over the significance of the difference between her life and her self. To Edna, the question of whether or not she would die for her children is somewhat simple. Edna attempts to explain this concept to her good friend, Adele Ratignolle, but to no avail, “I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself” (Chopin 62). Not only does Edna consider her life unessential, she categorizes it as equal with material objects such as money. The idea of self, on the other hand, lies on a completely different level in Edna’s mind. The most important goal to Edna in her life is the journey to discover her true character. The idea that her inner self is more essential than life or even her children causes Edna to stray farther from the social constraints of the typical domestic woman. Kathleen M. Streater weighs in on Edna’s situation and placement in

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.