Essay on The Awakening

Another reason Mademoiselle Reisz is significant to Edna is because she is the only one who knows about and Robert and Edna’s love. Mademoiselle explains Robert’s love for Edna, “ It is because he loves you, poor fool, and is trying to forget you, since you are not free to listen to him or belong to him ” (95). Edna’s love for Robert is the reason why she quickly becomes uninvolved with her family and the life she is socially supposed to have. She does what she wants with disregard to anything her husband has to say.

While Edna is seen to be distant from her family and friends to a point of being uncaring, Madame Ratignolle is devoted to her husband, children, and her friends. For example, when sitting at the dinner table

Questioning Women’s Equal Rights led to an uproar during the 1800’s, within the literary world the re-establishment of such era was exposed, through Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899). The protagonist, Edna Pointillier was beared in mind as selfish: as she“rejected domesticity in favor of her own fulfillment”(Walker 5). In the course of identifying a white middle-class woman, “the United States, disseminated through novels, religious writings, and advice books.” Proclaimg to be a true woman, “she must be confined to the home, devoted to husband, and children,” and deliberately avoid employment and the sphere of politics (Smith-Rosenberg). Shockingly, the empowerment of middle-class women grew, as reform movements and campaigns resisting

Edna is childish and foolish about her romances. She often cares for herself and not for her children or husband. Edna is very immature for her age and for having two children to look after. Mr. Pontellier; Edna’s husband; once said “If it was not a mother’s place to look after children, whose on earth was it?” (Chopin 1214). Implying to Edna that she did not care for her children like other wives took care of their children. Edna falls in love with a man named Robert. Even though she is married, Edna does not care about the consequences that could occur. She does not tell her husband, nor does he realize what Edna is doing behind his back. He is more interested in his work and studies. Once Robert leaves for Mexico, Edna finds that her friendships with Madame Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz become stronger and stronger as time goes by when Robert and her husband are gone. They keep

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.

The first time Edna and Madame Reisz met was at a social gathering, the peace that Madame started playing was titled “solitude”. Edna was sobbing after the first note and after the song was over they started talking. This lead to end of summer and then both went back to homes, Madame told Edna to come visit her if she ever wanted to and that she did. Madame Reisz’s apartment is a setting that was kind of a safehouse for Edna. She would go there if the world got to overwhelming to her, Madame was a wise women who Edna idolized. She never married, never had children, she held her beliefs close, and she went against society's role as a woman. Madame Reisz’s place in her life was to be a life mentor to Edna; whenever she had no idea what to do

Throughout The Awakening, Kate Chopin conveys her ideas by using carefully crafted symbols that reflect her characters' thoughts and futures. One of the most important of these symbols, the bird, appears constantly, interwoven in the story to provide an insight to the condition of Edna's and her struggle. At each of the three stages of her struggle, birds foreshadow her actions and emphasize the actions' importance while the birds' physical state provides an accurate measure of that of Edna's.

In Kate Chopin’s book, The Awakening, the women characters’ represent different types of women during the 19th century. The main character, Edna Pontellier, goes through a phase in figuring out her persona. Adele Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz provide options for Edna’s future. While Adele represents the “sleeping” woman, Mme. Reisz symbolizes the “awake” woman. Edna decides to wake up, but her desire for a man leads her to failure.

Edna realizes that she will never entirely be her own person because of her children. She states that she would “give [her] life for [her] children but [she] wouldn’t give [herself]” (133). She would be willing to give up her physical life but not her identity. When she witnesses Madame Ratignolle giving birth, she is told to “think

Edna Pontellier, the main character in Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening, is a woman trying to form her own identity, both feminine and sexually, in the repressive and Victorian Creole world of the latter nineteenth century. She is met by a counterpart, Mademoiselle Reisz, who is able to live freely as a woman. Edna herself was denied this freedom because of the respectable societal position she had been married into and because of her Presbyterian up bringing as a child. The role that Mademoiselle Reisz played within society, a society that failed to view her as being a truly respectable social member, was quite opposite to that of Edna’s respectable position in

In the article, “Kate Chopin’s The Awakening: Struggle against Society and Nature, Megan P. Kaplon criticizes the outspoken fiction novel, The Awakening by expressing and analyzing the Protagonist, Edna Pontellier’s actions towards her role in society. Throughout the novel Edna pursues to fulfill herself thus causing tension between family and friends. The novel takes place in the nineteenth century and disappointed many women because women were expected to obtain social roles during this time period. Women were to attain chores and take care of their families at home but instead Edna was different. She was only caught up in her own desire to make herself happy. Edna was a wife of Leonce Pontellier and mother of Raoul and Etienne Pontellier

As Edna starts to change her attitude and behaviors throughout the book, the attitude and behavior her husband Leonce has towards her changes as well. The reader never gets to experience what the Pontellier’s marriage life was before this alternation in the way they interact. When Mr. Pontellier begins to scold her for acting out of place, or doing odd things, Edna begins to realize that a life where she is restricted in her actions is not one she wants to live. The closest person in her life

Even though Edna has two children, she does not want to accept the conventional mother role. Mademoiselle Reisz represents another type of woman and another alternative for Edna. Although she is not married, Mademoiselle Reisz still fits society's role because she is "under control." She is a stable woman, who is not seeking "unladylike" excitement and adventure, as is the case with Edna. Rather, she has devoted her life to music, which is a worthy cause. However, Edna, having been awakened to her new-found desires, seeks excitement and independence.

Unlike most women at the time, Edna refuses to conform to simply being a housewife. Edna tells Madame Ratignolle, “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.” indicating that even in the early stages of her awakening she had accounted herself more pretentious than society proclaims. At the end of the story Edna stands by her word by ending her life due to the level of unhappiness she was feeling. A housewife of those times would have simply lived her life unhappy and suffered until she possibly couldn’t. Edna on the other hand, chose to take actions into her own hands and take control of what is to happen in her life resulting in her suicide.

From the beginning of the novel, one can note that, although Edna is a woman of the 19th Century, she does not completely fit the standard mold of one. “She was rather handsome than beautiful” (pg 3) and “Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman.”(Pg 8). Even more curious is the fact that Edna reads. The knowledge obtained from reading challenges the societal dictation of female ignorance. Contrary to Edna, Madame Ratignolle, represents more of a typical women of her time. She simply enjoys sewing and not reading. Furthermore, Edna finds her analogous to a “faultless Madonna.”( Page 10), which