The Awakening
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 dedica
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. For example, the first spoken sentences of the novel are not uttered by a human, but by a parrot screeching, "Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi!" (1). The super-ego is the socially conscious and restricted part of Freud's diagram. At one point, Mademoiselle Reisz states to Edna that in order to be considered an artist, "one must possess many gifts-absolute gifts-which have not been acquired by one's own effort. She had a family to which she had harbored a constant buried guilt that would never fully disappear. This society abounds with "mother-women," who idolize their children and worship their husbands. " She tries to explain the connection she and Mademoiselle Reisz share. The three women represent the three parts of Sigmund Freud's diagram of the mind consisting of the id, the ego, and the super-ego. This image of "The New Woman" stirred up questions about women's proper places, and men's proper places as well. Edna is thrown into the Creole society after her marriage to her Creole husband. Are we not naked when we are born? Edna was reborn in her final defiant step in her long journey to her final awakening. When Edna kisses Arobin in her husband's house, she feels "reproach looking at her from the external things around her which he had provided for her external existence" (84). Unfortunately, Edna makes the decision to end her life.
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,
pigeon house,
ideal woman,
madame ratignolle,
allez vous-en,
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freud's diagram,
tries explain,
edna pontellier,
mind edna,
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Acceptance Essays
