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 struck resonant chords and rocked an already unbalanced boat. Rarely is such extreme reaction achieved unless the subject matter has deep roots tapping into the unspoken truth, and in this situation, the truth being dealt with was that of female oppression.
Due to the oppressive lifestyles of women in the 1800s, and their inability to gain access to many professions, marriage was the only method through which many women at that time could insure their economic future. Love was not actually…...

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Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. 1981. The Awakening & Selected Stories. Introduction by Nina Baym. Modern Library. New York.

Douglass, Frederick. A Short Biography of Frederick Douglass. 1997. 2/24/02

Encyclopedia Britannica. Frederick Douglass; Civil Rights Advocate. 1999. 2/23/02

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 female role in society, and in trying to overcome that role. Chopin believes that some people possess the energy to keep up with their times and in effect to accept whatever may be their lot in life. These people do not need to examine reality or its meaning -- they indeed may not be able to do so, and instead they simply live. Madame Ratignolle is such a person, but Edna is not. Edna questions and examines, and the…...

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Works Cited

Allen, Priscilla. "Old Critics and New: The Treatment of Chopin's 'The Awakening."

In the Authority of Experience, Arlyn Diamond and Lee R. Edwards (eds.), 224-338. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977.

Barrett, Michele. "Introduction." In Virginia Woolf on Women and Writing. Reading: The Women's Press, 1992.

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Electronic Edition. Documenting the American South. August 7, 2007.  http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/chopinawake/chopin.html .

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 was unnecessary for women to earn an income or engage in labor for any other reason). Thus, it was her interactions with and devotion to certain specified others that was supposed to define her. As she awakens to the reality of this construct, she reflects, "I would give up the unessential [for my children]; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself (Chopin, Chapter 16). Once she realizes that she…...

Awakening mother-women ( Adele Ratignolle) mother-omen ( Edna
Back to Sleep: Edna's Fate

Kate Chopin's The Awakening functions as a turn of the century tragedy regarding the domesticated lot of women in American society. Its protagonist, Edna Pontellier, is forced to forsake all of the wonder, delight, and sensations of life -- those that are intrinsically hers, anyway -- for an unyielding society in which her only virtue is that of raising children and her role as a mother. That her reaction to her fate is decidedly different from that of the other mothers portrayed within the novel only serves to underscore the author's point that women must sacrifice their essential selves (their aspirations, their desires, their link to crave the very things that animate their children and which they themselves craved as children) to become credible matriarchs due to the "external, repressive force" (olff 449) of society. Edna was unwilling…...

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Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Project Gutenberg. 1899. Web.  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/160/160-h/160-h.htm 

Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. "Untitled interview." PBS. 1999. Web.  http://www.pbs.org/katechopin/interviews.html 

Wolff, Cynthia. "Thanatos and Eros: Kate Chopin's The Awakening." American Quarterly. 25 (4): 449-471.

Awakening
ONE (a): The Awakening speaks to the fact that women were breaking away from the dependence they had on men (and the power men had over women as a cultural tradition). hen Edna learns to swim, for example, she is extremely happy that she has control over something that propels her; Chopin uses Edna's emerging independence (and Edna's repulsion for the "…vague, tangled, chaotic…exceedingly disturbing" truth about her own life) as a metaphor for this breaking away from the role women played (Complete orks, 995). On page 1,000 Edna enters the water with no clothes and feels like a "new-born creature. Chopin's book broke literary tradition and created quite a stir because of the racy life and changes of Edna that led to her rejection of her wifely duties; the literary world, and the world of readers, were shocked because wives traditionally had obligations, and hence Chopin broke the…...

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Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. (1969). The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. Ed. Per Seyested. Baton Rouge:

Louisiana State University Press.

Edna's behavior has been foreshadowed through a conversation about her past with Mrs. Ratignolle in which Edna tells Adele of her childhood and the actions she took and the choices she made. Edna tells Adele, "I was a little unthinking child in those days, just following a misleading impulse without question" (61). Edna has not come far from her childhood days of defying what society thought should be done with one's life. Though this statement is in reference to Edna running away from prayers in the Presbyterian Church, it applies to many other aspects of her life. During her stay at Grand Isle, Edna overcomes her fear and learns how to swim. By learning how to swim, Edna gained power that eventually made her grow "daring and reckless, overestimating her strength" (73). She lacked the opportunity to develop a strong sense of self before she married Leonce because she had…...

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Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening and Selected Stories. New York: Penguin Classics, 1984.

Although he may be clumsy at times, he is in many ways just as much a victim of society as Edna. He was taught to expect certain things of a wife, and when Edna's temperament does not allow her to fulfill these functions, it is only natural for him to be confused. He tries to make her happy by giving her material things, and listening to the experts, like the doctor, who give him instructions as to how to make his wife feel content, but no one can give him good answers. Also, the world around him is filled with women like Adele Ratignolle, who seem to find the type of life Leonce gives Edna to be satisfactory.
I wanted to write a dramatic monologue telling the story of Leonce and Edna's marriage in the Awakening from Leonce's perspective. This does not mean that I believe that Edna was wrong…...

Awakening" and "A Doll's House"
The plight of women in the nineteenth century becomes the focus of Kate Chopin's short story, "The Awakening" and Henrik Ibsen's play, "A Doll's House." Moments of self-realization are the predominant themes in these stories, which result in enlightenment coupled with tragedy. This paper will examine Nora and Edna and how their situations push them toward the path of self-discovery.

Nora and Edna have much in common; they are married with children. Both women also undergo a transformation that leads them to make drastic changes in their lives in order to discover who they really are. Edna's transformation occurs over a considerable amount of time. She learns that she enjoys painting and through her relationships, she is also able to discover other parts of herself that create a separate identity from her husband and her children. In fact, she becomes quite liberated for a woman of…...

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Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: Bantam Classic Books. 1989.

Ibsen, Henrik. Three Plays by Ibsen. New York: Dell Publishing Company, Inc. 1963.

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,…...

Awakening
Kate Chopin's the Awakening is a tale of rebellion against social norms and the danger of venturing too far away from traditional conventions.

The protagonist, Edna, is married to Leonce Pontellier, a businessman from New Orleans. They have a beautiful house on Esplanade Street and are as one would say, respectable society. The novel opens on Grand Isle, just outside New Orleans, where the Pontelliers and their small children are renting a summer cottage from Madame Lebrun. Edna is a young and spirited woman from Kentucky who finds the life she is living a little too stifling for comfort. hile Leonce, is quite the opposite. He apparently thrives on routine and formality, and finds little time away from his business dealings for pleasure.

Edna and Madame Lebrun's son Robert return from an afternoon of swimming and join Leonce on the porch. They try to recount a funny incident from the day,…...

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Work Cited

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Accessed from Documenting the American South

web site May 11, 2005.

 http://docsouth.unc.edu/chopinawake/chopin.html

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 the author walks us through the different phases of Edna's life culminating in her committing suicide. Let us study the character of Edna and analyze if she was successful in achieving her objective of freedom and independence.

A view Edna's life as a failure from the perspective that she succumbs to the rejection from Robert and chooses to end up her life. The main feature of the novel is Edna's quest for freedom and liberation form the traditional outlook of society.…...

" (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…...

Men and Quality of Life in the Awakening
The Awakening is a story of one woman's struggle for self-identity. People have often remarked that Chopin defined for her time what it meant to be a woman. Edna, the main protagonist in the Awakening, gives us a glimpse of the inner struggle of women of that time, and how they struggled for independence in a time that fought against such a right. At a vacation resort near the Gulf, Edna begins her awakening and we begin to see that while Edna may blame men for her place in life, it seems that she may be the one creating her own madness, and the one that struggles with love the most.

In the beginning, Edna tries to be good. She tries to be like the traditional Creole woman, caring for her husband and children, and trying hard to be a suitable homemaker. But her…...

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Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: Prometheus, 1996

Kate Chopin's remarkable novel "The Awakening," Edna contemplates her ideals about life, love and remaining true to one's self, despite the conformity that typically changes one's nature. Edna is one who has always kept her true identity hidden, seen only by herself; a notion that is explained by the narrator as "the dual life -- that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions." (p. 35) The struggle between these two existences is the central conflict of the novel, and one that is explained at length by the plot.
Edna was never close to any females, which prevented her from developing deep friendships, which typically would have kept her from shutting out her innermost feelings. Women tend to tell their best girlfriend things they would never tell their husbands or their lovers -- men do not typically understand women and their emotional depths. When Edna becomes friends with the…...

John Wesley, who in May 1738 had his history-changing experience of having his "heart strangely warmed," was much impressed by Edwards' Faithful Narrative, which he read in October of that same year and which provided one of the models for the revivals he hoped to promote. A few years later, when his own Methodist movement was soaring, he published his own abridgement of Edwards' work, making it standard reading in Methodist circles."
The new fanatic followers even threatened the normal functioning of Northampton. y 1935 the awakening movement of Edwards began to subside but the break in 'awakening' was however short. George Whitefield another Anglican English priest visiting America helped revive the waning movement. Whitefield would compare favorably with today's televangelical priests, was a master of publicity. [Marsden, 2003] describes Whitefield as "being the first to apply modern commercial technique to religious ends." Whitefield and Edwards were the leaders of…...

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Bibliography

Edwards, J., Sinners in the hand of an angry God, retrieved form Internet on11th March, 2008,  http://www.jonathan-edwards.org/Pressing.html 

Edwards, J., the Manner in Which the Salvation of the Soul is to be Sought' retrieved form Internet on 11th March, 2008,  http://www.jonathan-edwards.org/Seeking.html 

Great Awakening, retrieved form Internet on 11th March, 2008,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Awakening 

Jonathan Edwards (theologian), retrieved form Internet on 11th March, 2008, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Edwards_ (theologian)

Three iconic high school dance movies helped shape popular culture from the late 1970s to the late 1980s: Dirty Dancing, Grease, and Footloose.  While the movies all focused on high school aged teens, they also had other similarities that are worth exploring.  They all feature relationships with a boy from the “wrong side of the tracks” in some way.  This is reminiscent of West Side Story, the original teen dance epic.  Of course, West Side Story derives its story from Romeo and Juliet.  Your thesis could focus on those similarities or you could....

Original Thesis Statement:

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens explores the transformative power of redemption and the significance of empathy in fostering a compassionate and just society.

Feedback:

While your thesis statement touches on key themes in A Christmas Carol, it lacks focus and precision. It covers two broad concepts (redemption and empathy) without delving into specific aspects or examining their interplay. To strengthen your thesis, consider narrowing your focus and providing a more detailed analysis.

Revised Thesis Statement:

The Haunting Visitation: The Transformative Power of Empathy and Redemption in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

This revised thesis statement addresses a specific aspect of the novel:....

Certainly! Here are some potential essay topics related to American Colonies:

1. Compare and contrast the motivations for colonization between the Spanish, French, and English settlers in the Americas.
2. Analyze the impact of European diseases on Native American populations during the colonial period.
3. Discuss the role of religion in shaping the development of the American colonies.
4. Explore the economic systems of the American colonies and their impact on the growth of the colonies.
5. Evaluate the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on the development and economy of the American colonies.
6. Examine the relationship between Native American tribes and European colonizers in....

1. The Struggle for Autonomy: The Impact of British Colonial Policies on Colonial Identity

Discuss the British policies that restricted colonial autonomy, such as the Navigation Acts and the Stamp Act.
Analyze how these policies fostered a sense of collective grievance and the desire for independence.
Examine the ways in which colonists resisted British control through boycotts, protests, and the formation of political organizations.

2. The Economic Foundations of the American Colonies: Agriculture, Trade, and Manufacturing

Describe the various agricultural practices and products that formed the backbone of the colonial economy.
Trace the development of trade networks between the colonies and....