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" (p.10)
This was a strong realization and one that shifted Edna's focus from her marriage, husband and her children to herself. She started looking inwards to understand herself and to find her place in the world. Is she meant to be a mother and wife alone? Doesn't she have some needs that must be fulfilled? Shouldn't she be allowed to live a life on her own terms? These questions originated in her mind and disturbed her. But they also helped her become more aware of her needs and what she really wanted.
Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight -- perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman." (p. 16)
There are two other important female characters in the story namely Mademoiselle Reisz and Madame Lebrun. They are women who are different from Edna but offer an insight into the ways women can think. Reisz is a woman that Edna doesn't...
She likes the fact that Reisz can play piano, enjoys music and understands art- all the things that Edna herself loved. But Reisz was a woman who could really be a straight shooter at times. She would cause great discomfort to Edna and make her feel unhappy. "Edna looked down at Mademoiselle Reisz and wondered how she could have listened to her venom so long. For some reason she felt depressed, almost unhappy." (p. 55)
Madame Lebrun on the other hand was a completely conventional woman. She was mother of the man Edna had fallen in love with and was the type of woman that doted on her children. But she was biased in her love for her children. While she would spoil Victor, she didn't pay as much attention to Robert.
The story presents an interesting tapestry of female characters that vary in their behavior and outlook. Edna is one the far end of the spectrum as she is highly unconventional but there are some other minor female characters that are on the other end with their highly conventional views. Reisz is also unconventional while Lebrun is somewhere in the middle.
Awakening Edna Pontellier- a failure Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" is a novel, which projects an entirely different perspective of women during the late nineteenth century. It is generally considered as a daring attempt to portray women as a self-reliant and independent being in a male dominated society. Through the character of Edna, the protagonist of the novel, the author tries to create a revolutionary change in the society. In the novel
Awakening, which might have been more aptly titled, The Sexual Awakening shocked the delicate and rigid sensibilities of Kate Chopin's contemporaries of 1899, although many of those contemporaries were slowly experiencing awakenings of their own. In telling the story of a married woman who begins to realize that she is an individual human being, rather than a nonentity made up of female roles assigned by a male-dominated society, Chopin immediately
It is Edna who achieves both the awakening of the title, the awareness of how the social traditions imposed on her are stifling her and preventing her from expressing herself as she would wish, and also fails in that she cannot overcome these traditions and so chooses suicide rather than continue under such a repressive system. Chopin implies that there is a danger in awakening, in understanding the nature of
The figures that, during the novel, have the greatest role in shaping Edna Pontellier's character, and therefore the figures from whom she must escape, are her husband and children. It is her role as wife and mother that is supposed to define her, as it did for much of recorded history. Women were thought to have very little value outside of the home, especially in the higher classes (when it
She is not asking Adele for permission and Adele does not try to force her to do or not do anything. She does kindly ask her to think of her children but she does not attack her. Adele does not understand Edna when she tells her that she would give her money and her life for her children but not herself. Her belief system is too different from Edna's
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