Awakening Essays (Examples)

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

" (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…

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.…

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…

Civil ar Awakening is Adam Goodheart's contribution to the canon of Civil ar historiography. The book is unique in that it is focused on the titular year, give or take a few for historical context. 1861: The Civil ar Awakening also has the latter word in its title because of the fact that Goodheart focuses much on the social and ideological awakenings that the war came to entail.
Roughly proceeding in chronological order, the chapters of 1861: The Civil ar Awakening encompass the lives of those who fought in the war, focusing mainly on Union military personnel and white male citizens. The book fulfills its promise as a narrative of a year in the life of a nation.

The American experience and American society were fundamentally changed after the outbreak of the Civil ar in 1861, claims Goodheart. To illustrate his thesis, the author draws from detailed analyses of primary…

Awakenings - Dr. Oliver Sack Film
Based on a true story about Dr. Oliver Sack's work in the 1960s, Penny Marshall's film Awakenings elucidates the challenges of clinical experimental psychology. Dr. Sack's fictionalized character, Dr. Malcolm Sayer had worked as a laboratory researcher until he was forced to accept a new position treating catatonic patients at a Bronx mental institution. His relative inexperience in a clinical setting could be partly to blame for his somewhat idealistic approach to treating the patients under his care. In any case, Sayer attends a conference about new treatments for Parkinson's disease. When he hears about the revolutionary drug "L-Dopa," Sayer imagines it might offer a viable treatment for the catatonic patients on his ward, whose symptoms result from their having childhood encephalitis. After applying to the hospital medical board for approval, Sayer is permitted to test the drug on one patient. In addition to…

This suggests that it is an intellectual understanding of her friend's beatings and not a true emotional empathy that she is after. Though the scene is most definitely tragic, if it is approached with the same intellectual curiosity that the two adolescents bring to it can only be seen as an episode of horribly dark humor. The fact that endla can be so foolish as to desire an intellectual understanding of child abuse shows her complete lack of a true appreciation for the situation, and is thus a comic -- not necessarily humorous, but comical nonetheless -- situation.
The end of a play is also one way to determine if a particular work is a comedy or a tragedy. The fact that Moritz and endla are both unnecessarily dead at the end of the play at first seems to suggest a tragedy, as does Melchior's expulsion. hen the characters end…

The wildly prolific Joyce Carol Oates also delves into the role of modern women in her fiction writing, although a quick review of her works spanning the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, suggests it is more difficult to draw as direct a connection between Oates' major works and biography than it is with Chopin. However, like Mrs. Mallard of "The Story of an Hour" briefly delights in a fantasy coming to life, only to find her hopes dashed when the promise of freedom is taken away, the heroine Connie of "here are you going, where have you been," finds her fantasy of being seductive and more beautiful than her conventional mother and sister to be far different than she realizes in reality. In Oates, much more explicitly than in Chopin, the trap of femininity 'used' as a vehicle of liberation for the teenage Connie becomes a lie, as…

Papyri
Awakening Osiris: The Egyptian ook of the Dead

The Egyptian ook of the Dead is a western title for an ancient collection of Egyptian manuscripts, the majority of which were funerary in nature. These collected writings have also been referred to as the Egyptian ible or identified by the names of the scribes who penned them. The Papyrus of Ani comprises the most significant contribution to these texts, though there are some other minor sources which are often included. In the original languages, these works were more accurately entitled the ooks of Coming Forth y Day. One of the greatest challenges to English-language speakers when confronting all the great scriptures is the language gap. Unless one has the time and inclination to learn Arabic, Hindi, Hebrew, Greek -- or in this case, Egyptian Heiroglyphs -- it becomes necessary to read the scriptures in translation. The farther removed one's own…

olves: The sexual awakening of Little Red
"The Company of olves" by Angela Carter depicts the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood as a sexual awakening for the young woman, Little Red. [THESIS]. This can be seen in how the wolf is sexualized and depicted as a vibrant, attractive man in the eyes of Little Red

"He strips off his shirt. His skin is the color and texture of vellum. A crisp strip of hair runs down his belly, his nipples are ripe and dark as poison fruit but he's so thin you could count the ribs under his skin if only he'd give you the time…His genitals, huge. Ah! Huge!" (Carter 317). The story retains the general structure of the fairy tale until the end, but the descriptions of Little Red and the wolf give the story an additional sexual relevance.

For example, in the above-cited quotation, the…

Nora's Awakening #2
Lori D'Angelo

Nora's Awakening

A Doll's House by Henrick Ibsen is a 1879 play that provides insight into the life of a women during the 19th century. While the play takes place over a short period time, it is during this time that Nora Helmer realizes that she is unhappy, and she needs to break away from her husband. Nora feels as though she was never given the opportunity to live the life she wanted, and after seeing what her husband, Torvald, thinks of Krogstad, a man who has committed the same crimes Nora has in order to save Torvald, she can no longer keep her thoughts to herself and resolves to stop being objectified by all the men in her life. In the play, the turning point comes in Act III when Nora compares herself to a doll and explains how she has always been treated…

We must be willing to fail, to falter, to suffer, in order to become greater versions of ourselves. Sometimes, being shown lesser versions of ourselves can be the key to this personal evolution.
And perhaps most importantly, we must recognize that this personal evolution does not occur in a vacuum. To the contrary, we improve ourselves only if we improve the value we represent for the whole of humanity, in whatever modest capacity this may be possible. Here, we are driven by the idea that "a human being is a part of a whole, called by us the 'universe', a part limited in time and space."

This is perhaps the unifying principle in our discussion. The openness which is a recurrent theme here denotes especially the imperative to remain open to one's fellow man. Nothing that we do occurs independently of the needs and wishes of family, friends, communities, societies,…

Similarly, Mademoiselle Reisz fascinates and inspires Edna beyond words, yet Edna cannot possibly duplicate her life. Adele, kind and sympathetic as she is, in conversation with Edna, still cannot even begin to understand Edna's deep yearnings for freedom and independence; for she shares none of them. Even the longed-for Robert, upon returning from a protracted trip to Mexico, tells Edna that his own view of their future life together (should they ever have one) would be heartbreakingly similar to her present life with her husband.
Within Kate Chopin's the Awakening, noises, conversations (pleasant and unpleasant) laughter, sobbing, and sounds associated with eating and drinking, fill the novel. Symbolically, many of these, such as Edna's breaking of the glass vase in frustration near the beginning of the story, underscore the essential action, as well as the feelings of the main character. Other sounds, such as party chatter at various Creole gatherings…

As such, she fails to address the central problem of feminism in the Pontellier perspective, namely the impossibility of female individuality and independence in a patriarchal world. It is only in isolation that Edna can find any happiness, and she must make this isolation more and more complete in order to maintain her happiness, as the patriarchy has a means of encroaching on all populated areas, and Wollstonecraft's feminism does not offer an alternative to this need to escape humanity.
A final snort of disgust might be distinctly heard from Edna Pontellier upon her reading of this line of Wollstonecraft's, afterwards she might likely have flung the text aside (or into the fireplace, depending on the season): "Pleasure is the business of woman's life, according to the present modification of society" (ch. 4, par. 10). What Wollstonecraft means is that women are thought to be so fragile, so emotional, and…

Here, we see that Edna realizes what is happening to her and why. She sees Robert as a catalyst for her awakening but not the answer to her yearnings for a more fulfilled life. It is also important to note how Edna refers to her life being a stupid dream. This remark illustrates the intensity of what she is going through - in essence; it pinpoints the reason behind her awakening.
Another character responsible Edna's awakening is the doctor. As we have mentioned, Edna is living in a day and age where women are supposed to be happy fulfilling the role of wife and mother. hen Edna seeks out the doctor for advice, his words are difficult to hear. hile he may empathize with her, he is also being pragmatic when he tells says, "Youth is given up to illusions" (147). His words reinforce what she already knows and Edna…

Lover" and "The Awakening"
Both Kate Chopin's The Awakening and Marguerite Duras' The Lover address what happens when a woman searches for a way to leave her present life behind and seek a new one that may, or may not, be any better. In The Awakening, 28-year-old Edna Pontellier struggles for selfhood but does not have the strength to accept the ramifications of this possibility. In The Lover, the 15-year-old female narrator embraces self-awareness and uses her acquired strength to widen life's possibilities.

The Awakening takes place at the end of the 19th century, when the Western world was beginning to undergo major changes due to the Industrial evolution and increased urbanization. Although women were beginning to envision a less-restrained future, they were still, for the most part, bound by tradition to be subservient to their husbands. Middle- and upper-class women were expected to stay at home as idle, decorative…

Deyo's commentary represents the type of attitude that forced women to conform to standards that while they are not demeaning, they are not for every female. Chopin knew that some women were not designed to be mothers and wives and she knew that there was absolutely nothing wrong with this assertion. Chopin and Edna were women out of time, living with others that could not accept the fact that a woman could be single and happy. Edna's death is seen as pathetic but what critics fail to understand about her death is that it proved to be the only acceptable way of life for Edna. All other options had been exhausted and the duty of wife and mother was simply unacceptable because it created more anxiety than anyone on the Pontellier family could bear. Edna knew that her future was bleak and she knew that a depressed, disassociated mother was…

Edna needed more than what family life could offer her but she was living in a time where women did not seek an independent life outside the home. Edna was a woman out of her time and society made sure of that.
Another aspect that leads to the breakup of Edna's marriage was the relationship she had with men other than her husband. Edna and Robert are not doubt in love but even Robert's love could not satisfy Edna. She knew this and Robert's love, romantic as it was, could never be enough. Edna needed Robert but not completely. However, Robert is significant because he brings Edna "out of a life-long stupid dream" (143). She valued their relationship but knew that it would not last. She tells him that he is a foolish man because he:

wastes his time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting…

Her various lovers' beauty seems consistent with her love of beautiful material things and her admiration of herself as a beautiful object. For Emma, having an affair is another celebration of material goods -- her lover is an object that marks her as worthy, just like having the best clothing and furniture that money can buy (or can be borrowed). Her love is not for Leon or Rodolphe anymore than her love of her clothing is for the piece of cloth -- she seeks out men for what they can do for her, so she can engage in an enactment of her fantasy of herself as a star of a romance. Flaubert underlines this fact by having Emma fall in love during various representations of provincial life that represent consumerism or superficiality, such as a local agricultural fair or watching an opera.
Edna, in contrast, seeks to find love below…

Analysis

The Baby Boomer Revival assumed shapes and forms different than the former ones with programs Charismatic movement, the East Timor Indonesian Revivals, the 'Jesus People', the Asbury College Revival; and the Saskatoon Revival representing the spirits of the times in order to woo people to the mission movement and get them interested in the Church. At oen time, the church would have prohibited these charismatic programs and many, indeed, were controversial when they first appeared and still are today. Nonetheless, their impression and effects have been enduring and in a time when traditional programs were falling flat with the church losing members per day, innovative programs were the only ones that succeeded.

What I have learned

Sometimes, dramatic changes -- a shift in perspective and a change of habits -- are necessary for end-goals and objective to be reached.

The Pre-Reformation Revival, 1300-1500

Summary

Corruption of the church lowered…

Intellectual development is reflected in the creation, development and eventual preference for a specific type of government or representation in the society. Consequently, this period of intellectual development helped promote the freedom and social order, as more forms of representation and governance were developed and implemented in American society. Republicanism's eventual dominance over other governments and political ideologies, however, reflects the society's need to preserve and champion their individual freedoms and at the same time, maintain social order despite people's political differences and beliefs.
The Great Awakening emerged as an ideology, a religious movement that embodied social order and served as a precursor to the American Revolution (declared in the late 18th century). This revivalist religious movement in American history paved the way for an "open and undisguised Unitarianism" among different Christian sects and churches in America. While there was still diversity among churches and sects, the Great Awakening improved…

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 but the woman can still connect on a female level. ithout this bond, Edna would have never been able to reach out to other people in hopes of forming a connection.
Adele is necessary for us to see how Edna has evolved over the course of time. This is easily demonstrated in her relationship and her feelings toward Adele. Edna's development can be seen in stages throughout the story. One way in which her change manifests itself is how she begins…

Teaching, I believe, is a vocation that should be pursued by those who can help students to not just master required subject matter but develop skills for critical thinking, so that, they in turn, will be able to contribute to and further build on the accumulated body of knowledge in their chosen fields. To successfully achieve the aforesaid objective requires personal commitment; mastery of the subject being taught; originality and creativity; and the ability to make students relate to the subject matter.
Given my own views on 'teaching,' I was naturally pleased to find that the objectives of my course had been carefully structured and defined to meet precisely the above-mentioned requisites. This has been particularly meaningful for me as both a student today, and hopefully, as a teacher of high schools students tomorrow.

The personal importance of successfully achieving the stated goals of the English program led to my…

Great Awakening: The eginning of Evangelicalism
The evangelicals started a new movement in the 1950s called new evangelicalism with a basis on human experiences that downplayed the role of doctrine and turned back on external church relations which in a way made it hard to differentiate evangelicalism from the mainstream Christendom. This movement has experienced several transformations since the Reformation from pietistic evangelism, fundamentalist evangelism, and classic evangelism to the more modern form known as evangelistic fundamentalism. Within the movement, the emergent church is increasingly growing to influence the postmodern culture. y advocating for diversity and pluralism, postmodernism in no way lays claim to any absolute principles in the new cultural dispensation. And so the new church primarily focuses on the younger generation. y attempting to reverse the church to the practices of the middle ages, it can only be possible to take a critical look at the spokespeople because…

In fact, rather than approve her action, the man who first awakens her new-found sexuality, Robert Lebrun,
rejects Edna. As an idealized object of desire from far away, Edna was
attractive to Robert. hen Edna makes himself available to him, in real,
physical terms, Robert's superego dominates his id-driven desire for
pleasure. Although he desires Edna as an object of fantasy, because of his
intense sense of guilt, she also comes to embody all he fears, namely the
complete liberation of his desires from all societal constraints. Edna thus
becomes Robert's scapegoat, or shadow, rather than an object of fantasy.
For a number of persons in the novel, Edna functions as a shadow. For
example, Ad?le Ratignolle, a devoted wife and mother, willfully conforms to
what society demands of a woman. Edna's eventual outsider status is what
all Adele fears-solitude, loss of family, and the pursuit of sexual
conquest. Yet…

relationships of Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin's book, the Awakening. The writer of this paper uses examples from the book to take the reader on a journey through Pontellier's relationships and how they impacted her life and actions.
Awakening ith Help

Often times when someone does something like commit suicide the world turns a cold and blind eye to what may have contributed to that person's downward spiral. Authors of literature can take the time to explore this dark side of the person's life, which is exactly what Kate Chopin did in her classic tale The Awakening. Chopin shocked the literary world when she penned the story of Edna Pontellier and her desire to be free of a loveless marriage and boring children. It was written in a time when women were often trapped in such marriages and they had been born and raised to accept such a fate and…

In conclusion, these works all illustrate the changing role of women in 19th century society. At the beginning of the century, women's work was inside the home and raising a family. By the end of the century, Victorian women were attempting to add meaning and fulfillment to their lives. Women in this country were attempting to gain the right to vote, they were forming women's groups and societies, and women like Gilman, Chopin, Wollstonecraft Shelley, and others, were attempting to create their own writing careers, allowing them to be at least partially autonomous and independent. They write of women's struggles for equality and understanding with great knowledge, skill, and perception. They also write of the realities of being a woman in the 19th century. For the most part, women's lives were unfulfilled and controlled by the men around them.

eferences

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening, and Other Stories. Ed. Knights, Pamela.…

She begins to let her own creativity flow and through her art takes a closer view of her own father, who has controlled her since she was a young child. With her pen in hand, Edna realizes that she need not be caged in and just copy what she sees. Instead, she can draw freehand with her own interpretations. She starts to recognize the power that she has as an artist and creator of her own life.
Likewise, Edna begins to understand her sexual power. She is not only free to feel with her artwork, but also with her sensuality and sexual awareness. Now she recognizes the power with both her art and body and is ready to attempt things that once were impossible. For example, she fully experiences her physical power when learning how to swim. At first, she feels "a certain ungovernable dread hung about her when in…

Country of the Pointed Firs," by Sarah Orne Jewett, "The Awakening," by Kate Chopin and "My Antonia," by Willa Cather. Specifically, it will show the development of the complexity, or the straightforwardness, of the point-of-view. Point-of-view is often as difficult to pinpoint as the characters of great novels. Sometimes, the point-of-view in a novel can shift and change, but the bottom line is -- point-of-view is a compelling way to keep the reader interested in the story, while telling more about the characters. Thus, point-of-view is a central part of the telling of a tale, and that is one of the most important techniques a writer can use to get their point across to the reader.
Point-of-View in Three Works

Point-of-view is one of the devices used to make or break a novel, and these three pieces all use point-of-view effectively and quite differently to set the stage, tell the…

Gender Identity/Male-Female Roles and Power Relationship. In a discussionof characters from "The Awakening" by Despite the fact that there are numerous differences existent in the novels The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Light in August by illiam Faulkner, and Their Eyes ere atching God by Zora Neale Hurston, there are some poignant similarities between these three works of literature. They were all written in the years directly preceding or occurring subsequent to the arrival of the 20th century, and they all deal with issues related to race (albeit extremely indirectly in Chopin's book). Moreover, all of these pieces chronicle definite challenges presented to women due to notions of gender and society that were pressing during this historical epoch. Some of the more salient issues affecting women during this time period, such as marriage and motherhood and the degree of autonomy (or dearth thereof) women had in living their lives is explored…

Society looks at women's bodies to define their happiness or unhappiness, but Chopin suggests that women must look deeper into their psyche to find the cause of their personal difficulties.
omen become scapegoats for what is wrong with society. omen are eternally 'misread' by those who claim to love them because they are only seen in terms of their physical or married life. Mrs. Mallard dies of horror when she sees that her husband is alive but his apparent resurrection from the dead is assumed to have stopped her heart with "the joy that kills" by the doctors who examine her body. They cannot conceive of the idea that a lack of freedom, rather than a lack of a man might make a woman miserable. Although Armand is himself of mixed race, as is revealed at the end of the story, it is Desiree who must suffer and is blamed…

William Penn, a Quaker whose father had been an Admiral in the King's oyal Navy, was given a large piece of land as payment for a debt owed by the Crown to his father. Penn had suggested naming the new territory Sylvania, meaning wood, but the King added his surname, Penn, as a tribute to William's father (Uden). Penn considered his venture a "Holy Experiment" and sought to establish a society based on religious freedom and separation between religious and governmental authorities,
Under Penn's governorship, Pennsylvania became a safe haven for all persecuted religious groups like the Quakers. He instituted a ballot system that intended to allow all members of Pennsylvania to have an equal say in their own governance. Some of the provisions of equality and religious tolerance in the charter that he drafted for Pennsylvania would eventually be incorporated into other charters, including the U.S.

Constitution (Uden). Perhaps…

The fact that a novel in the sentimental and seduction genre attained such heights of popularity is, in the first instance, evidence its impact and effect on the psyche and minds of the female readers of the novel. As one critic cogently notes:
hy a book which barely climbs above the lower limits of literacy, and which handles, without psychological acuteness or dramatic power, a handful of stereotyped characters in a situation already hopelessly banal by 1790, should have had more than two hundred editions and have survived among certain readers for a hundred and fifty years is a question that cannot be ignored.

(Fiedler 94)

The initial question that obviously arises therefore is what made this book so popular and in what way does this novel speak to the feelings and aspirations of the readers to make it such a perennial favorite. As Fudge ( 1996) notes,

It is…

Freud and Surrealism
Art and science are strongly interrelated fields. It has been through the recognition of the compatibility between art and science that some of the greatest achievements in both areas have been created. It was Michaelangelo, the artist, that made revolutionary anatomical discoveries in the pursuit of art, discoveries which would become an integral part of the development of medicine. The early mapmakers were the first to create mathematical grids, and those principles would be translated into perspective and proportion for artists recreating three-dimensional objects in two-dimensional art. Along this same vein, the scientific study of the mind, psychology, has had a significant impact on art. The father of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud, discovered the metaphysical "psyche" in his search to understand the symptoms of his patients, opening up science and medicine to the world beyond the physical. Artists latched onto his theories about the importance of the…

Nirvana
Religious doctrine usually includes some form of salvation as a reward for good behavior and for keeping to the tenets of the religion. Each religion treats this general idea in its own way. For the Christian, right behavior lead to salvation from permanent death and promises an afterlife in heaven. In uddhism, the promise is not of an afterlife but of a reward in this world, a reward in the form of perfect peace through a mind free of craving and unwanted emotion. Nirvana is a state of mind and an achievement in itself, for nirvana is that state of mind to which the adherent aspires. It is considered the highest form of happiness and is achieved only by the most dedicated follower of the uddha.

The conception of salvation usually relates to the idea of some ultimate value or being, and it can be thought of as an…

Federalist Papers, the U.S. Constitution was ratified in the late 1780's by the original 13 states. But this new nation would experience a myriad of other changes by the turn of the century. With a new political system, westward expansionism and manifest destiny would guide the new American spirit. Of the most significant transformations on the American landscape of the late 18th and early 19th centuries were the parallel phenomena of the Industrial Revolution and the Second Great Awakening. One an unbridled attempt to expand the material world, the other a fanatical endeavor to revive religious sentiment, these movements were uniquely positioned in time. They would also pull the American psyche in two opposing directions.
The Second Great Awakening was a never-before seen Protestant revival movement that swept through the new nation. Preachers sought converts and converts sought church membership in record numbers. On the other side of the equation,…

Jude the Obscure," by Thomas Hardy, "The Awakening," by Kate Chopin, and "The Odd Women" by George Gissing. Specifically, it will show the Victorian women's struggle for emancipation, even if it meant dying for it. Victorian women had to live under many societal constraints which kept them subservient and shackled to their relationships. When women struck out for independence and vitality, they were crushed by an unbending Victorian society whose mores did not encourage personal growth and transformation for women.
VICTORIAN WOMEN

Each of these novels portray a different facet of Victorian women, however, ultimately the females in these three works all suffer from the constraints of Victorian society, and each one struggles for emancipation and equality in her own way. Each woman lives outside the "norm" of Victorian society and works to become self-actualized long before it was a recognized or accepted concept.

In "Jude the Obscure," Arabella typifies…

Kingdom of Matthias
n the early nineteenth-century America went through a phase of religious revival with many people turning to the religious beliefs in Christendom following the religious instability that took place in the seventeenth-century in England for the reformation of Christians and the community. The most notable event amongst all the momentous events was called the Second Great Awakening, which lasted one year and began in 1830. This year holds a lot of history for a country like America because it was the same year that Americans reached the highest level of consumption of alcoholic drinks, with an average of four gallons per person. This was not only the highest for all the years of American history but also one of the highest in the world. t was in the year that came to be known as 'the spirit-soaked year' when the evangelical preacher Charles Grandison Finney came to…

On June 27, 1844, hundreds swarmed the jail and brutally murdered the Smith brothers, leading their followers to conclude that they were martyred (Sisk).
At Joseph's death, righam Young was president of the Twelve Apostles of their church and became the leader of the largest faction within (Sisk 1992). Some who separated from Young's group formed their own, called the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, under the leadership of one of the brothers of Joseph Smith. In 1846, Young's group declared that the "saints" would leave Nauvoo and they settled in Utah the following year and, for the next 20 or so years, many moved to Salt Lake Valley to join those "saints (Sisk)." The growth was so tremendous that many ascribe greater magnetism to Young than to Joseph himself in attracting followers. It is noted that the current-day Mormon Church has millions of such followers…

In McTeague, Norris applied the caged bird motif to illustrate the protagonist's chained existence that was at the mercy of naturalistic forces. As the canary is moved from place to place, so is the protagonist forced to move from one experience to another until he dies. It symbolizes the protagonist's life and death experiences. When McTeague finally dies near the end as he is handcuffed with a corpse, we see the canary also breathing her last: "McTeague remained stupidly looking around him, now at the distant horizon, now at the ground, now at the half-dead canary chittering feebly in its little gilt prison." (Chapter 22)

In Three Lives by Gertrude Stein, we have three important characters Lena, Anna and Melanctha whose lives are succinctly discussed. In this novel, it is Anna's character that can be closely associated with a caged bird. She is a German immigrant who works ceaselessly with…

Hawthorne
Hooper suddenly dons a mysterious black veil "which entirely concealed his features, except the mouth and chin, but probably did not intercept his sight, further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things," (Hawthorne). This "gloomy" veil is the central symbol of Hawthorne's short story, "The Minister's Black Veil." As with other Hawthorne stories, "The Minister's Black Veil" offers a poignant critique against hyper-religiosity in ultra-Puritan New England. Hawthorne shows that a Christian obsession with the theme of sin has been taken to an extreme, evident in Hooper's mentally deranged methodology. By wearing the veil continuously in her personal and public affairs, Hooper alienates himself from those who care about him, including the community members who used to count on him. On the other hand, guilt-ridden members of the community view Hooper's veil as a sign that the minister is ultra-pious and therefore capable of…

Siddhartha a Buddhist?
Originally published in 1922 by German writer Hermann Hesse, the classic novel of personal discovery Siddhartha has since become one of the most widely read works of religious fiction ever written. By presenting the tale of a young man named Siddhartha coming of age in ancient India, the European-born and Christian-raised Hesse manages to portray mankind's collective yearning for spiritual satisfaction through a highly readable and relatable narrative. hile the novel focuses on the age of Gautama Buddha, whose teachings attracted millions of followers and eventually formed the foundations of modern Buddhism, Siddhartha himself is the son of a respected Hindu Brahmin and has trouble identifying with any particular system of belief. Embarking on an epic journey of reflection and awakening, Siddhartha experiences both self-sacrifice and the temptation of worldly pleasures as he grows into manhood, before eventually encountering Gautama Buddha in the flesh. After gaining firsthand…

Representations of omen
The concept of slavery in America has engendered a great deal of scholarship. During the four decades following reconstruction, despite the hopes of the liberals in the North, the position of the Negro in America declined. After President Lincoln's assassination and the resulting malaise and economic awakening of war costs, much of the political and social control in the South was returned to the white supremacists. Blacks were left at the mercy of ex-slaveholders and former Confederates, as the United States government adopted a laissez-faire policy regarding the "Negro problem" in the South. The era of Jim Crow brought to the American Negro disfranchisement, social, educational and occupational discrimination, mass mob violence, murder, and lynching. Under a sort of peonage, black people were deprived of their civil and human rights and reduced to a status of quasi-slavery or "second-class" citizenship (Foner). Strict legal segregation of public facilities…

Kingdom of Matthias. There are three references used for this paper.
From the Quakers to the Great Awakening to Nat Turner, we have examined numerous variations of where a belief in the 'inner light' or the 'priesthood of all believers' could lead. It is important to examine the cult of Matthias to understand why he was popular, the factors which could have led to his revelations, the social and religious climates and the needs of his followers. It is also important to explore whether the cult was due to the transhistorical appeal or if it offers deeper lessons about early American religious experiences.

Matthias

Robert Matthews was "a carpenter from upstate New York who, after a lifetime of finding God everywhere and economic success nowhere, rode his half-starved horse into Manhattan in 1832, proclaiming his own divinity. He presented himself as not a Christian at all, but as Matthias, the…

Stanton's Solitude Of Self
Elizabeth Cady Stanton's speech before the United States Senate in 1892 was the first major awakening of women receiving the right to vote, thus validating the equal rights for all people as written in the United States Constitution. The actual seed for the first omen's Rights Convention was actually planted when Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a well-known anti-slave and equal rights activist, met Lucretia Mott at the orld Anti-Slavery Convention in London; the conference that refused to allow Mott and other women delegates from the United States because of their gender. This refusal only infuriated the cause, many finding extreme commonality in anti-slavery and omen's Suffrage Movement (DuBois). In 1851, Stanton met temperance advocate Susan B. Anthony around 1851, found that they had a great deal in common and joined together in a three pronged approach to repeal or limit the sale of alcohol, emancipate the slaves,…

representation of Death and the impermanence in the short story "A Father's Story" by Andre Dubus, and the poem "Because I could not stop for Death" by Emily Dickinson. These two works were chosen because both speak of Death and impermanence, yet these authors employ different literary forms, characters, settings and plots. "A Father's Story" follows the format of a short story, being prose written in concise paragraphs with a main point or moral and portraying its characters by the way they speak. "Because I could not stop for Death" follows the form of poetry, being structured in shifted lines and using language to evoke imagination or emotion in the reader. In addition, the two writers substantively approach Death very differently. Comparison of these distinct forms shows how writers can make very different styles and statements about Death and impermanence through different devices, including but not limited to the short…

Dogen's Great Doubt
Both exoteric and esoteric Buddhism teach the primal Buddha-nature [or harma-nature] and the original self-awakening of all sentient beings. If this is the case, why have the buddhas of all ages had to awaken the longing for and seek enlightenment by engaging in ascetic practice? [Masao Abe, A Study of Dogen, 19]

How did Dogen's "Great Doubt" influence his approach to the philosophy and practice of Zen? How is this approach reflected in his conception of zazen (seated meditation) as "just sitting" (shikan taza)? Contrast Dogen's "just sitting" with the koan style of zazen that developed in the Rinzai school of Zen.

To understand his primal Buddha-nature, the Buddha of all ages paradoxically had to stand outside of the material world of suffering. Through meditation, he was able to break within himself the chain of infinite actions or desires that make up the material world. Dogen's great…

religion shaped development of colonial society in 1740s New England, Chesapeake, and the Mid-Atlantic. eligion shaped development in these areas in a wide variety of ways, and the most important religious development during this time was the "Great Awakening." The "Great Awakening" was an important event in American history and religious history. It was the first real step away from the organized, strict religions that had followed the settlers here from England.
The "father" of the Great Awakening was Jonathan Edwards. He wrote a sermon called "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," which became very famous. A religious historian writes, "In that sermon he used the image of a spider dangling by a web over a hot fire to describe the human predicament. His point was that at any moment, our hold on life could break and we'd be plunged into fires of eternal damnation" (Matthews). While many…

Jesus' Teachings, Prayer, & Christian Life
"He (Jesus) Took the Bread. Giving Thanks Broke it. And gave it to his Disciples, saying, 'This is my Body, which is given to you.'" At Elevation time, during Catholic Mass, the priest establishes a mandate for Christian Living. Historically, at the Last Supper, Christ used bread and wine as a supreme metaphor for the rest of our lives. Jesus was in turmoil. He was aware of what was about to befall him -- namely, suffering and death. This was the last major lesson he would teach before his arrest following Judas' betrayal. Eschatologically speaking, the above set the stage for the Christian ministry of the apostles, evangelists and priests. Indeed, every Christian is called to give of him or herself for the Glory of God and the Glory of Mankind. The message at the Last Supper was powerful. People have put themselves through…