The Seduction Of Women In Chopin's The Awakening

Society keeps order, allows for advancement, and gives humanity a good face. It also imposes morals, roles, and limits a person's potential development. If someone wishes to reach beyond what society expects of them, they must cast aside social restrictions. Edna Pontellier, in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, feels the urge to cast off the veil society burdens her with and live as she chooses to. The driving factor behind her desire to awaken is her lack of sexual fulfillment. She lives her life following conduct becoming of a woman who marries into the Creole elite of New Orleans. While her husband, Léonce, adores her, she does not truly love him and their relationship appears platonic. Robert, a young paramour, woos Edna and

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.

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.

Over the course of time the male species has always been the gender to attain the more favorable conditions. Numerous cultures heed to the belief that the man is the provider and head of his family. This machismo nature can condition the mind to believe that a man should feel superior to a woman. The continuous cycle of male superiority flows down from father to son subconsciously. Do to this unceasing sequence of behavior women fall subject to repression and control at the hands of mentally undeveloped men. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, illustrated this particular topic in a way that not only appealed to the readers’ sense of pathos but, the readers’ likeliness to be able to relate to the aforementioned as well. Chopin stylistically renders the struggle of the protagonist Edna Pontellier, a strong willed woman who finds herself imprisoned to the concept of trans-temporal existence, as she seeks refuge to her true being, Edna experiments relationships with multiple men that unintentionally repress her existence. Between Leonce Pontellier, Robert Lebrun, Alcee Arobin and The Colonel effect of Edna’s life they catalyze her awakening and ultimately lead her suicide.

Chopin brings forth many physical attributes of Edna that no only apply to women, but that also those that apply to men. By doing this Chopin sets up the idea that Edna is not fit for the typical roles that she has been assigned to fulfill. Since Edna has been assigned masculine attributes this differentiates her from the rest of the women in the novel during the Victorian Era. For instance Chopin writes how Edna is “handsome rather than beautiful”(25)) and furthermore Chopin describes Edna to have “strong, shapely hands” (24), “thick and almost horizontal” (25) eyebrows, “firm, round arms” (28), and “strong, white teeth” (59). These physical descriptions are usually associated to men, however Chopin gives them to her female protagonist

The novel The Awakening by Kate Chopin contains content that is highly debatable and easily controversial. In the essay Chopin’s The Awakening by Roger Platizky, the author interpreted from the novel that the depression of Edna Pontellier, the main feminine lead, is created not only from the male oppression of the time period, but is also derived from the idea that Edna is affected by a previous encounter with sexual violence, either as a witness or a victim. While there is some way to infer that this is true, it is not confirmed and is quite a reach, considering her life now and willingness with men. The reason that some readers believe this is due to her “mood changes, boundary problems and suicide” (Platizky, Roger). If Edna was a victim or witness to sexual violence, she would be even more submissive and fragile as a character. This theory is untrue, however, because throughout the novel Edna Pontellier displays a growing strength that is presented to the men in her life and finally gains her the independence she has been desiring, even if it isn’t in the most predictable way.

Disrespect towards women has been a key factor that has worsened gender equality throughout the years, and Chopin portrays this by using a literary device. In 1899 it was a time when less than 5% of the workforce was made up of married women, and this directs to the unkindness seen in many situations. In chapter 1 from The Awakening, Chopin uses tone to illustrates a scene when Edna’s husband shows her very little respect; he does this as Edna asks him, “‘Coming back to dinner?’ his wife called after him. He halted a moment and shrugged his shoulders.” This quote reveals the

The story “The Storm” largely mirrored Kate’s life when she had an affair with a married man named Albert Sampite (According to Jasdomin Rolento, Pace University, May 5,2008). She used Albert’s name and personality to create the main character Alcee, who in the story is a married man having a guiltless affair with a married woman “The Storm” continues Chopin 's battle with the theme of women 's sexuality and the complications

When Chopin says: “...no powerful will bending her in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature” (par. 14), I noticed she mentioned both sexes; yet you imply this is indicates her perception of marriage and how "...women are forced to be submissive."

   In Kate Chopin's time traditional patriarchal notions about women and sexuality deemed sexual passion a negligible, even improper, aspect of women's lives. Yet Chopin boldly addresses a woman's sexual desire in her short story "The Storm". This story shockingly details a torrid extramarital sexual encounter between Calixta and Alcee` in the midst of a raging storm. While this story line could have been presented in a traditional light, perhaps as a lesson about the evils of uninhibited female sexuality, Chopin maintains a non-judgmental stance by refraining from moralizing about the sanctity of marriage or impropriety of Calixta's actions. In failing to condemn and even

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

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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

In her attempt to uncover the “grain running against the grain” in Chopin’s novel, Patricia Yaeger dismantles conventional approaches to The Awakening that regard the work as an emancipatory text by virtue of its rebellious, adulterous heroine alone. Using Tony Tanner’s analysis of Edna’s infidelity as “belonging to the tradition of transgressive narratives,” highlighted in his work, Adultery in the Novel, Yaeger conversely emphasizes how Chopin’s development of the romance plot between Edna and Robert supports rather than subverts patriarchy. Although Edna credits Robert with “[awakening] me last summer out of a life-long, stupid dream,” her love for him interrupts rather than inspires her awakening, for Edna has simply jumped from the shelter of Leonce’s money and the social stability he affords to the school-girl fantasy of romantic love Robert represents. In each relationship, whether financially or emotionally, Edna remains dependent upon a man, but more significantly, men exist as the mirror through which Edna perceives herself. Without Robert, Edna forfeits the life she began to construct for herself, as well as the burgeoning female subjectivity awakened the summer before.

Women in literature have been portrayed in a multitude of ways throughout time. From goddesses to witches, and even prostitutes, women have not been limited in their representations. One challenge, in particular, is repression of their sexuality. In novels by Kate Chopin, George Orwell, and Kazuo Ishiguro, female characters live in societies that seek to regulate their sexuality. Published in 1899, The Awakening by Chopin focuses on Edna Pontellier, a woman who seeks to create a life outside her marriage by pursuing relationships with various lovers. George Orwell’s 1984, which was published in 1949, features Julia, a woman who rebels against her society by having sex for pleasure and not for reproduction. In addition, like Chopin and Orwell,