The Awakeni

ngAnalyzed By:

Amanda WingAuthor:

Kate Chopin

On Kate Chopin...• Kate was born in 1850 in St.

Louis Missouri. She was the only child of her sisters to have lived past the age of 25. Kate was a social reformer and an artist who expressed herself through writing in an honest manner. She took the risk of going against society that not many other woman of her time found the strength to have.

• She was a fictional writer who considered her primary responsibility showing people the truth about life as far as she knew. She was among the first American authors to write honestly about women's hidden lives, their sexuality, and about some of the complexities in their relationships with their spouses.

Author’s Date and Cultural Perspective...

• Kate first started writing The Awakening in 1897, and it was published on January 21, 1899 by Herbert S. Stone & Company. This was all during a time of great societal controversy.

• Society had already been engaged in a struggle over ideologies and equal rights issues for almost fifty years before Kate’s novel was even published. Women had already found a certain amount of emancipation from their societal shackles, and also started to bring light to private issues within the home and family.

Opposing Forces in the Conflict

•  Edna’s clear transition is from a “model-wife” in the New Orleans Creole community who constrains her from doing what she wants, to a free and sensuous woman with artistic dreams.

• Once Edna begins her search for independence, she finds herself in a difficult position with the expectations of society, requiring her to disregard her own needs and to focus on the needs of her husband and children.

• The main conflict in this novel is really a woman’s need to express herself and live freely versus the narrow conventions of Victorian society. Edna did not want to be told what and what not to do. This conflict is developed as the narrator shows us Edna’s realization (awakening) that she doesn’t fit into the mold that she is expected to fit into. She slowly separates herself from societal pressures and her family.

Important Places• The novel begins on Grand Isle, a very popular summer vacation

spot for wealthy Creoles. The second half of the novel is set in New Orleans, mainly in the Quartier Français, or French Quarter.

• This novel explores the sexual and emotional awakening of Edna. She is seduced by the island, the ocean, the environment, and  the people that help her to see herself in a different and exciting way.  This change begins on Grand Isle, continues on a visit to Cheniere Caminada, reaches a peak in New Orleans and is completed again at Grand Isle.  

• Chopin describes Grand Isle and The Cheniere as very beautiful, calming and relaxed.

Symbols…• The Ocean - The sea represents the differences between:• choice and blind submission• self-determination and fate• and also between life and death

– At the resort, Edna first realizes that she can still feel love, and that she still has the power to change her life. She finally learns how to swim, and experiences the power and connection between her mind and body. Both of these experiences have a great deal to do with Edna's determination to find herself. To Edna, the sea represents a sort of comfort and self-renewal. Edna returns to the sea later on in the novel to try renewing the freedom that she experienced when she learned to swim and the possibility of altering her life. The ocean in a way calls to her, and Edna willingly and ultimately ends her life in the one place she felt alive.

• Birds – Edna, from the very beginning, is symbolized by the green-and-yellow parrot in a cage. The parrot squawks “Go away, for God's sake." Very much like the parrot, Edna begins to desire being alone, pushing her husband and friends away to achieve solitude in which she can work on her new found love for art, allowing her to truly self-reflect.

• Sleep – Edna’s moments of awakening are often lead by sleep and she does a great deal of it. Edna's sleep patterns are a rebellion against natural rhythms. Sleep is a way of escape and of repairing her emotions.

• Clothing – Edna is fully dressed in the beginning of the novel, and as the novel progresses, her clothes are slowly removed, symbolizing the shedding of societal rules.

• Houses – There are several different houses within the novel. There is one on Grand Isle, one in New Orleans, the pigeon house, and the house that Edna falls asleep in on Cheniere Caminada. The first two of these houses serve as cages for Edna, whereas the others are symbolic for freedom. The Cheniere and pidgeon house are places that Edna is allowed to dream and to wander, while New Orleans and Grand Isle are places that she is shackled and expected to be a housewife.

Conflict : Self/Society

• Edna faces her first problem when she finds herself very attracted to Robert Lebrun. She starts to take her role in life thus far into consideration and is very unsatisfied.

• In the novel, Edna is expected to conform to the expectations of the society that she is a part of, yet these expectations are containing her from doing as she pleases.

• Edna does a great deal of self-reflection, finding that the way she has been living is not the way she wishes to be. She slowly leaves her responsibilities behind, completely going against the grain. There is a strong connection in which society and self go hand in hand in The Awakening. Edna discovers and awakens from the ‘sleep’ she had been in, recognizing her power as an individual, and ultimately drops the façade of being a socialite.

Setting Influence…

• The setting is a key component to the novel’s conflict. The story takes place in the late 1800s. Most of the action is set in the center of Creole society in New Orleans. Grand Isle, a resort near New Orleans, has the most influence on Edna, however. The Grand Isle in the Gulf of Mexico is an intimate and relaxed atmosphere. Edna falls in love here, and changes her life when she returns to the city life.

• The experiences and the people that Edna meets on Grand Isle illuminate her desires for music, sex, art, and freedom that she up until this point can not keep hidden. Edna starts to see the world around her with a new perspective, dropping the behavior expected of her and ignoring the effects of her actions.

Is anyone idealistic?

• Edna Pontellier's idealism deals with her expectations concerning her role as a woman in 19th century patriarchal culture.

• She finds it difficult to settle the reality of her life with her idealized vision of what she thinks life should be.

Does anyone change?• Edna changes in several ways as she discovers herself as an

independent and openly rebelious woman. As the main protagonist, Edna undergoes a significant change in behavior, attitude and overall character as she becomes aware of the hidden truth that she finds. Her rebellion seems to be motivated more by the selfish desire to fulfill her whimsical desires than to fight for a greater cause larger than herself.

Friendship?• Mademoiselle Reisz• This woman is independent and very bitter towards society. She is an excellent

pianist whose playing often moves Edna. Being a woman of solitude herself, Mademoiselle Reisz is a role model to Edna.

• Robert Lebrun• Robert is a young, intelligent and romantic man. He is head over heels in love with

Edna, but is incapable of expressing how he feels because she is of course a married woman. He is a contributing factor to Edna’s awakening.

• Alcee Arobin• He is a shallow and self-absorbed womanizer who pursues Edna in a casual

relationship. He awakens Edna’s sexual desires.• Adele Ratignolle• This is Edna's foil in the novel. She lives solely to serve her family, and does nothing

but. She attempts to help Edna, but ultimately fails.• Doctor Mandelet• Doctor Mandelet is Edna’s family doctor, who is the only one in the book that can

understand Edna’s metamorphasis. He could have done a lot to help her out, but he was too late.

Narrator’s importance…

• The narrator of the book seems to be anonymous, in the objective third person, as well as aligning with Chopin occasionally. The narrator doesn’t criticize or applaud anyone and simply remains neutral, especially with Edna. The narrator holds back on judging her actions.

Family relationships…

Leonce Pontellier - Edna’s husband is a highly successful business man who, like other Creole husbands, expects Edna to fulfill the role of perfect wife, mother, and socialite. He also views Edna as a part of his personal property.

• Edna is fond of her children in a very impulsive way. Sometimes she’ll miss them when they’re away, and sometimes she’ll forget them. If anything, she feels a sort of longing for them in their absence. When she is away from them, she feels a certain sense of freedom of responsibility. The role in which she assumed in the Creole society gave her the burden of children and a husband, of which do not suit her true identity.

Human value asserted…

Even from the beginning, Chopin’s novel The Awakening has instigated a great mess of controversy, but over the course of a century, the opinions and ideological concerns have changed immensely. The early attacks were a matter of moral condemnation of its main character, Edna, who was supposed to represent important American values.

Anyone lost or alienated?

• For Edna, independence and solitude go hand in hand. When Edna begins to talk about her feelings of independence, she immediately senses resistance that weigh on her active life. When she decides to drop her assumed lifestyle, she realizes that her independent thoughts do not go hand in hand with society at all. Thus leading to the isolation and rejection that Edna experiences.

Cultures at odds?

• A woman's place in the Creole society is limited to worshipping her children and submitting to her husband. Chopin's novel illustrates the frustrations in Edna’s life as she attempts to deal with these strict cultural demands. Edna defies the stereotypical “mother-woman” role in this novel, battling the command of being a devoted housewife. Edna's suicide is a waste of her struggles against the oppressive society she faces, yet the novel backs up and encourages feminism as a way for women to gain sexual freedom, independence, and identity.

Tone? Diction? Genre? Irony?

• Tone- The tone is objective.

• Diction- Chopin uses a unique style of diction to display the tone and theme. Within the course of the novel, she uses formal language conveying the fact that the characters are wealthy and upper-class. Even in Edna's mind, her thoughts are quite formal.

• Genre- This is a novel of intellectual/spiritual/moral evolution, and artistic realization/development. It shares elements of local color genre.

• Irony- Edna's awakening is actually the cause of her death. She wanted to fall in love and she found just that in an affair with Robert Lebrun. Deep down she knew it wasn't true love, but unrequited when he left her. She had difficulty loving her children. In the end, these realizations caused her to take her own life by drowning in the ocean.

The End!