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¶ … Awakening: The contradictions of sexuality, marital fidelity and infidelity play
Edna Pontellier of Kate Chopin's The Awakening is trapped in a milieu that is simultaneously sexually repressive, yet primarily defines women in terms of their sexuality. To articulate herself, Edna 'must' engage in marital infidelity. Women are given few other channels than sexuality to explore the world in 19th century society. At the beginning of the novel, Edna is searching for her 'calling,' and is dissatisfied with the roles and responsibilities of being a conventional wife and mother to two young children. To express herself, Edna embarks upon an ultimately fruitless affair with Robert Lebrun. She is unable to find fulfillment, like her friend Adele, who cheerily bears a difficult childbirth and the tedium of marriage. However, Edna is not able to lead a completely transgressive existence, like the artist Mademoiselle Reisz. She lacks a sense of a singular calling, and instead seems to have more of a 'calling' for life, a calling that is denied by her social world.
Edna is 'betwixt and between,' neither able to wholly isolate herself from society, sexuality, and love like the reclusive Mademoiselle Reisz and unable to limit her intellectual and emotional capacity like Adele. In modern language one might say that Edna wants a balanced life, or wants to 'have it all,' but this is impossible given the Victorian morals of her day. To be sexually faithful renders her into an Adele-like role, but to rebel through infidelity simply subjugates her into another stereotypically feminine role, and denies her the social status of being a wife and mother. Yet Edna does not have either the talent or full inclination to be a hermit and slave to her art like Mademoiselle Reisz. Caught adrift socially, Edna flounders and literally as well as figuratively drowns in a sea of contradictions, in a society that demands women either abandon their sexuality to pursue their art, or subsume themselves sexually to a man, in marriage or as a mistress.
Sex Therapy The efforts in the form of behavior modification with a view to solve the problems in sexual interactions are known as sex therapy. Sex problems most common in the present environment affect the couples in their sex lives and adversely reflected in their sexual behavior. Sexual behavior is any activity inducing the sexual arousal in solitary or between two persons or in a group. The human sexual behavior is
Gender and Sex after World War I We usually assume that great changes in American sexual behavior began just after World War I; however, Maurer (1976) argues that there was foreshadowing as far back as the 19th century. The woman's rights movement, a tendency to violate sexual taboos (called free love), and a preoccupation with blander forms of Marxism dramatically came together in the United States at the end of the
Robinson's daughter. She has no dialogue of any depth...She agrees to marry a tall, blond jock...mostly because her parents will be furious with her if she doesn't. She is so witless that she misunderstands everything Benjamin says to her. When she discovers Benjamin has slept with her mother, she is horrified, but before they have ever had a substantial conversation about the subject, she has forgiven him -- apparently
Mark Twain's realism in fully discovered in the novel The adventures of Huckleberry Finn, book which is known to most of readers since high school, but which has a deeper moral and educational meaning than a simple teenage adventure story. The simplicity of plot and the events that are described in the book look to be routine for provincial life of Southerners in the middle of the 19th century. But
Clinical Psychology Dissertation - Dream Content as a Therapeutic Approach: Ego Gratification vs. Repressed Feelings An Abstract of a Dissertation Dream Content as a Therapeutic Approach: Ego Gratification vs. Repressed Feelings This study sets out to determine how dreams can be used in a therapeutic environment to discuss feelings from a dream, and how the therapist should engage the patient to discuss them to reveal the relevance of those feelings, in their present,
This became an age in which visionary thinkers said, "see, we told you so," and were able to garner additional support from not only the activist type, but the regular citizen. Talking Points Malthusian dynamics (overpopulation and resource allocation) became a focus of futurists. Marshall McLuhan, for one, combined futuristic predictions with analysis of global media and advertising trends. Noam Chomsky was revolutionizing the idea of linguistics as a way to view