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