Essay about The Voice of the Sea in The Awakening

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).

Now, she is fully awake, but in contrast to how leveling the word awake look like, she dies inside. Edna looked straight before her with a self-absorbed expression on her face. She felt no interest in anything about her. "The street, the children, the fruit vender, the flowers growing there under her eyes, were all part and parcel of an alien world which had suddenly become antagonistic" (104). After she's rebirth, she awakes with a new realization that she will never be able to live the way she intended because of her gender. Her husband treats her as property he owns, he over controlling actions did not calm her but stir up a rebellious mind. She repeats to herself "To-day it is Arobin; to-morrow it will be someone else. It makes no difference to me, it doesn't matter about Leonce Pontellier--but Raoul and Etienne!" She understood now what she meant by she "would give up the unessential" (97). But never for the children. The complex relationship with them and the children mess up with Edna's mind she desperately needs a place to rest. "she knew a way to elude them. She was not thinking of these things when she walked down to the beach" when she put herself in the water; she saw flashbacks from her childhood memories, is not it ironic that children would always want to grow up, but adults would continuously mourn for their never coming back childhood

The voice of the sea pulls her back with reminiscence of her childhood. Edna recalls an incident of running through "a meadow that seemed as big as the ocean" (Chopin 60) This connection of the seemingly endless field and the wide expanse of the ocean leads to a realization for Edna. Her life is no longer as plain and simple as it had been for many years. Suddenly, she feels like a little girl running through an unending field, "unthinking and unguided" (Chopin 61). She does not know what she wants from life anymore. She has a husband and children, but the thought of them lacks the feelings of pleasure and love that she should have for them. Instead, they are holding her back, preventing her from running across that wide expanse of grass which symbolizes freedom. She realizes this when she returns home, despondent over what seems to be a loss of her new-found freedom and despondent over the realization that Robert will never gie up society's traditions to be with her, a married woman.

“The Sound of the Sea” is a sonnet by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, describing the sounds of the sea and relating it to human inspiration. Through only auditory images of the sea and other powerful natural forces, Longfellow effectively alludes to the nature of human inspiration. Through detailed and sensory imagery, Longfellow communicates the subtle details of the human soul and how inspiration functions.

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.

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 Edna, swimming represents freedom. When she learns to swim, "A feeling of exultation [overtakes] her, as if some power of significant import [has] been given her to control the working of her body and her soul" (73). Because Robert is the one who teaches her how to swim, he is seen as her liberator. She fears the water, just as she fears freedom. When she does taste freedom, she desires more of it. This is paralleled when she learns to swim. "She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before" (73). Robert aids in her independence, but

Whether coerced or through self realizations, there were many awakenings in the book. The first was that Edna was not the traditional mother like Adèle, the second was that she enjoyed doing things for herself instead of for her children and husband. This second awakening is shown when Edna takes time to talk

“The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, and inviting the soul to wander for a spell in the abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation." (Chopin 13). Edna was a person that found passion within arts of life, her admiration to her most intimate friend who had the gift of writing, a personal way of expressing, as well as Mademoiselle Reisz who played the piano with a passion that broke tradition for which Edna was the only one to appreciate it, Mademoiselle Reisz music evoked a waking with Edna 's body and soul that could not compare to nothing else - "But the very passions themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it lashing it as the waves daily beat upon her splendid body. She trembled, she was choking, and the tears blinded her"(Chopin 27). Approximating the end of the summer Edna also nears a personal growth within, she learns to swim, simply ineffable to Edna but ordinary to many other people would not care for its gift, she learned to swim and she went as far into the ocean where no woman had swum before, a point in Edna 's life that prepares her to open herself up for new choices. She choices to find shelter in a man that had aroused herself as a young beautiful woman, she choices to dream and long for Robert Lebrun like the other forbidden men in her childhood, but its only when she returns to her charming home on

(213). The narrator once again speaks of the sea as if it were human. Stating the “waves paced to and fro” and “the great sea’s voice”, he gives the sea life and a voice. Having figures of speech such as these gives the story life and a vivid

The sea is a primary symbol of freedom throughout the text and therefore provides a vital portion of the story. Despite originally fearing the sea and the freedom it represented, she later found herself entering the depths of the water, discovering her own possibility. Feeling empowered and autonomous, Edna released from

She is moved by music. During that summer Edna sketches to find an artistic side to herself. She needs an outlet to express who she is. Edna feels that art is important and adds meaning to her life. After the summer is over and they are back to the city and Edna is a changed woman. She makes many steps towards independence. She stops holding "Tuesday socials", she sends her children to live in the country with their grandparents, she refuses to travel abroad with her husband, she moves out of the Lebrun house on Esplanade Street, and to earn money, she starts selling her sketches and betting the horses. She also starts a relationship with another man Alcee Arobin. He meant nothing to her emotionally but she used him for sexual pleasure. Edna evolved above her peers she did not believe that sexuality and motherhood had to be linked. The last step of her "awakening" is the realization that she can not fulfill her life in a society that will not allow her to be a person and a mother. Edna commits suicide in the ocean at Grand Isle.

The ocean is a symbol of both freedom and danger, and freedom brings as sense of danger in Edna’s time for women.

The Awakening begins in Grand Isle, while Edna and her husband are on vacation from New Orleans. The society of the time dictated that Edna was tied to her husband, her children and her home. Many of the rules of New Orleans society are relaxed in Grand Isle and Edna is free to explore many new things. The simple act of learning to swim becomes liberating for Edna. When she is swimming, she feels as though she is completely free of the oppressive circumstances of her life. Edna’s relationship with Mademoiselle Reisz further helps her learn new things and empower herself. Mademoiselle teaches her basic artistry skills which allow her to fully explore her talent and creativity. This artistic freedom is part of the culmination of Edna’s freedom within society. The harsh constraints placed upon women in the society which Edna lives make total freedom and independence almost unattainable. Edna’s inability to escape her husband and her attachment to her children led her to her ultimate downfall. Having no place to turn or escape to, Edna commits suicide, which appeared to be the only possible means for achieving freedom and liberation.

Symbolism in The Awakening is interpreted in many ways. It is important to understand the meaning of each explanation of symbolism given by every critic to fully appreciate the novel. Art, for example, becomes a symbol of both freedom and