Feminism in The Awakening Feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. In the novel The Awakening, Edna Pontellier has her own awakening and sees freedom that men in her society have, and she suddenly wants a taste of that freedom. She dismisses all of her expectations that society has put on her just to get that freedom. She forgets about some of the important people in her including her husband and children. Women during Edna’s time were seen to just follow the rules and not speak out. In The Awakening Edna suddenly disregards her societal expectations such as her duties as a woman, mother, and wife. In the novel Edna has an awakening, and she suddenly defies against what …show more content…
Edna wants freedom so badly that she is forgetting about her duties with anything in her life. Her husband, Leonce, can start to see the change in his wife. This is starting to concern him because she normally does not act like this. Leonce and the rest of society has certain duties that they expect Edna to follow through with. After her awakening, she no longer wants to complete these tasks. She does not want to be told what to do, or be held down by society’s standards. For example, in the novel Edna does not complete one of her duties, “There were a good many,” replied Edna, who was eating her soup with evident satisfaction. “I found their cards when I got home; I was out.” “Out!” exclaimed her husband, with something like genuine consternation in his voice as he laid down the vinegar cruet and looked at her through his glasses. “Why, what could have taken you out on Tuesday? What did you have to do?” “Nothing. I simply felt like going out, and I went out.” “Well, I hope you left some suitable excuse,” said her husband, somewhat appeased, as he added a dash of cayenne pepper to the soup. “No, I left no excuse. I told Joe to say I was out, that was all” (Chopin 50-51). Edna no longer wanted to do something because her husband or society expected her to do it. If she did not want to do it, she simply would not do it. She did not want to be held down by what society expected from her. She wanted to become her own person. She found another way to gain freedom. She realized that men had a sense of freedom when they lived on their own. So, Edna bought a house just down the street from Leonce’s and moved out. She told people that she did not want to live in her house where it was filled of her husband’s things. It was just too big for her since she was all alone. Megan P. Kaplon states, “ The pigeon house, as she calls it, is a place far away from any reminders of her
Edna feels her own unhappiness with life, but during her sleep phase, she is unable to. find the reason for this. She feels that she might not have the right to disagree with social norms since she is a woman, but she does not yet claim it. Edna longs for freedom and the feeling of doing as she wants, but she is tied down by her marriage and stressed by the responsibilities of her family. With her having this conflict, she decides to move out of the house then into her own.
In The Awakening, we are shown that a person’s freedom physicaly and emotionally can’t always be ignored. This Idea is strengthened upon when Edna chooses to move into a smaller house down the street, leaving her nice big house with Mr. Pontellier without his consent. She preferred her small cozy home over her large rich house, that symbolized her want for a simpler more concentrated lifestyle instead of the previous bland life. Through this action, Edna realizes that she is becoming her own new person and that alone enforces the idea that freedom can’t emotionally be ignored. When Edna pursues Robert over Mr. Pontellier, she also illuminates her views of individual freedom.
The notion of freedom (). The responsibility of women is to manage the house. “Every step she took toward relieving herself of obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. She began to look with her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to "feed upon opinion" when her own soul had invited her” (32.7). There’s an inverse relationship between obligations to society and happiness as an individual. In other words, the more Edna distances herself from society and its demands, the happier she is as an individual.
But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul" (504). Although Edna did perform her duties as a wife for some time, she is not the typical housewife. She does not worship her husband or idolize her children, which makes both Edna and Leonce begin to sense that Edna is different from the other mother-women (Lin 1). Edna never realized the reasons she neglected her duties as a wife until she fell in love with Robert and acknowledged that her desires and needs exist outside of her marriage. Thus, after her experiences with Robert, Edna is ready to neglect her husband even more, because she now realizes that her husband is holding her back from her needs. When Leonce tries to make Edna act like the other women that obey their husbands, his attempts to control Edna further instigate Edna's desire for independence from him. For example, the scene when Edna is lying in the hammock, Leonce says: "I can't permit you to stay out there all night. You must come in the house instantly," Edna replies: "I mean to stay out here. I don't wish to go in, and I don't intend to. Don't speak to me like that again; I shall not answer you" (492). Edna is carefree and spirited, and she refuses to conform to her husband because she does not want to lose herself. Becoming the perfect, obedient wife would mean losing her individuality, and Edna realizes she can gain no fulfillment
Throughout history, women have been expected to fit into a rigid gender stereotype. Women in the early 1900s would be expected to care for children, be able to do household duties and obey everything their husbands instructed. Those women that did not fit the stereotype were looked down upon by members of society and were often alienated. Edna, the protagonist of the novel, had to battle her inner conflict of not wanting to conform to society's standards throughout the novel. Over, and over again, she was reminded of the fact that she was different and that society did not approve of her way of thinking. In the novel The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, the author uses the characters and their actions in society to express the oppression and expectations society had towards women.
In first paragraph of the novel, Kate Chopin describes an image of a bird that is restrained from its freedom just as Edna feels held back from hers. “A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door...” (Chopin, pg#) There is symbolism behind the caged bird, which refers to Edna’s feelings of imprisonment. The bird symbolize Edna at home, a place she can’t escape from and has to live with under her husband’s “ruling”. There is a saying in Spanish that states
This itself differentiates Edna from the female population, because she would not accept the idea of being someone who she wasn’t, just so that she could fit a certain image for the public.
During the late nineteenth century, the time of protagonist Edna Pontellier, a woman's place in society was confined to worshipping her children and submitting to her husband. Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, encompasses the frustrations and the triumphs in a woman's life as she attempts to cope with these strict cultural demands. Defying the stereotype of a "mother-woman," Edna battles the pressures of 1899 that command her to be a subdued and devoted housewife. Although Edna's ultimate suicide is a waste of her struggles against an oppressive society, The Awakening supports and encourages feminism as a way for women to obtain sexual freedom, financial independence, and individual identity.
when the roles of Victorian women were expected to be limited to childbearing and a housewife. Their life was suppose to be centered around their husband and their children. They would submit themselves to their husband and was in charge of the domestic duties. So the women’s and men’s role were not viewed with the same status since women’s rights are given to their spouse after marriage. Thus in The Awakening, Edna’s actions are viewed as uncanny and erroneous because women were not viewed as equals but as housewives.
As the novel begins we are shown Edna’s life before her escape from society’s standards. At the beginning we are shown that Edna is valued by society because of her physical appearance and is portrayed as a housewife married to a wealthy husband. On only the seventh page of the novel we are shown the lack of individuality women had during this time period. We are first introduced to Edna and Edna’s husband, Leonce. Leonce creates the income for the family as well as viewing his wife more of a possession rather than a partner. Leonce notices Edna is sunburned when she has come back from swimming and views her as “a valuable piece of property which has suffered some damage” (7).
Referring once again to the ideas of true womanhood, we go into Edna’s role as a wife and how she combated against those ideas. A perfect wife would be described as submissive, tend to the house, and not work. (Christina R. Williams 2008) In
In the novel The Awakening, by Kate Chopin the critical approach feminism is a major aspect of the novel. According to dictionary.reference.com the word feminism means, “The doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.” The Awakening takes place during the late eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds, in New Orleans. The novel is about Edna Pontellier and her family on a summer vacation. Edna, who is a wife and mother, is inferior to her husband, Leonce, and must live by her husband’s desires. While on vacation Edna becomes close friends with Adele Ratignolle, who helps Edna discover she must be “awakened”. Adele is a character who represents the ideal woman. She is loving,
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.
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 literary novel The Awakening written by author Kate Chopin was groundbreaking in its time as a story following Edna Pontellier’s transformation from an obedient, traditional housewife and mother into a self-realized, sexually liberated and independent woman— all written during the Victorian era of patriarchal constraints and beliefs that a woman was fit to be only a wife and mother. Chopin introduces a multitude of feminist issues throughout the duration of the story, including the societal structures of motherhood, marital expectations and feminine liberation. The fact that Chopin’s novel addresses these issues is a testament to how radical and ahead of its time The Awakening was. Although this novel was originally published over a century ago, it is clear that the feminist topics that Chopin proposes in the novel are still relevant today in our modern day patriarchal society.