The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Victorian woman was the "old maid, fallen woman, and the angel in the house" (Claire Kahane, 5), all rolled into one. This same Victorian woman "captured the complicated effects of the era's attempt to control the representation of women's nature" (5). In the 1880's, this "angel in the house" (5), this "ideal woman", was challenged by what was called the "Novissima", "The New Woman" who rejected marriage and motherhood and contested the boundaries of those separate entities.Edna Pontelleir in Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, is a woman that is way ahead of her time. She is a woman living through the Victorian Era, although without the many pretenses that most women at the time did. Not only did she not fit into the Creole role that her husband had set up for her, she was having a difficult time squeezing into the gendered role that he had established for her as well. Edna gradually "awakens" to the realization that she is a person and not the possession of her husband. She also realizes she is in an oppressive society and that she is no longer one of the mindless members of the majority, but an individual who's passion conflicts the responsibility that society feels she should be dedicated to.
The two women are examples of the two conflicting versions of the woman in society. She was very much like Mademoiselle Reisz, but she did not possess the strength or understand as well as she could have. Yet her first night at the pigeon house she spends with Arobin, and this time feels no reproach or regret. She has the freedom to make the decisions in her life now; and she decides that she is going to live life by her own rules, not the rules that society has laid out for her. As for the spiritual ramifications provided by her new home, Chopin writes, "There was a feeling of descending in the social scale, with the corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual. One of Edna's first major steps towards personal independence was the purchase of the small home around the corner to live in by herself, also known as the "pigeon house. Madame Ratignolle represents this part. Edna held a lot of potential to change the ways common of these times through her example, and she nearly succeeded, but she did not have a strong enough will. " By winning money from the races and purchasing this small home, Edna has created financial independence as well. So very possibly, her ending her physical life by wading and drowning in the water is simply the last and final step of the awakening process. Unfortunately, Edna makes the decision to end her life. This part of the diagram is a virtual mediator between the id and super-ego, keeping both in check and wavering between the two. Are we not naked when we are born? Edna was reborn in her final defiant step in her long journey to her final awakening. She was pious, submissive, nurturing, and simply the image of domesticated perfection.
Common topics in this essay:
Mademoiselle Reisz,
Claire Kahane,
Victorian Era,
Unfortunately Edna,
Madame Ratignolle,
Mademoiselle Reisz's,
Grand Isle,
Reisz Edna,
Sigmund Freud's,
Edna Mademoiselle,
mademoiselle reisz,
ideal woman,
pigeon house,
madame ratignolle,
allez vous-en,
freud's diagram,
woman society,
tries explain,
edna pontellier,
mind edna,
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