Author\'s Style the Novel\'s Structure and Theme in the Awakening by Kate Chopin

Chopin's The Awakening

Edna Pontellier's Quest for Freedom in Chopin's the Awakening

Kate Chopin's The Awakening revolves around Edna Pontellier and her quest for self-discovery. During the course of her journey, Edna breaks away from the socially acceptable behavior expected of women at the time. As a woman, Edna was expected to marry "and take part in [her] husband's interests and business" (Appell). Additionally, "women were not…allowed to be educated or gain knowledge outside of the home because it was a man's world" (Appell). Chopin's characterization of Edna's awakening is somewhat reminiscent of the freedoms she personally experienced while growing up alongside strong, independent, and trailblazing women who continuously defied conventions and did not let society dictate what they could or could not do (Wyatt). The Awakening takes part during the course of two consecutive summers in which Edna exhibits cyclical tendencies. Through her various rebellious, albeit unadvised actions, Edna finds social, emotional, and sexual freedom.

Edna is able to achieve social freedom by defying her family's wishes and marrying a man they did not approve of. Chopin writes, "[Edna's] marriage to Leonce Pontellier was purely an accident…He pleased her; his absolute devotion flattered her…Add to this violent opposition of her father and her sister Margaret to her marriage with a Catholic," which Chopin contends was enough reason for Edna to marry Leonce (Chopin 22). By marrying Leonce and leaving her father and sister, Edna was moving from one constrained environment and moving into another as Leonce "reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of [their] children. If it was not a mother's place to look after children, whose on earth was it?" (10). Leonce's attitude towards Edna's obligations demonstrates that even though she was free from her father and sister, she was not free from social convention.

Edna subsequently attempts and achieves emotional freedom by engaging in an emotional relationship with Robert Lebrun. During her first visit to Grand Isle, Edna realizes "her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her" (17). It is this realization that enables her to fall in love with Robert, a defiance of the relationship she is supposed to have with Leonce. Chopin writes, "For the first time [Edna] recognized the symptoms of infatuation which she had felt incipiently as a child, as a girl in her earliest teens, and later as a young woman" upon meeting Robert (50). Eventually, during her second summer at Grand Isle, this infatuation leads Edna to confess to Robert, "I love you…only you; no one but you. It was you who awoke me last summer out of a life-long, stupid dream" (113).