Edna Pontellier's "awakening" can be seen as a transformation of herself using two women in the book as symbols. Edna has many similarities to Adele Ratignolle at the beginning of the novel. Madame Ratignolle symbolizes the typical Creole house-wife in the Victorian age which the no...

I very much enjoyed this story, almost hard to believe that it was written in 1899! I can imagine that it was very shocking to read of a woman's sexual awakening. I found the opening imagery very interesting, could this beautiful bird in the cage symbolize Edna? Very interesting that in the...

I remember last summer, walking along the beach, seeing the sunset and thinking to myself "This is heaven!" when I was interrupted by the voice of a man exclaiming, "C'mon, it's just a stupid sunset." My first impression of this man was that he was ignorant and wouldn&...

American Lit. II Paper 2 2-17-2K The main characters depicted in both Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome and Kate Chopin's The Awakening undergo a personal struggle in their attempt to deal with the universal emotion of love. Ethan Frome and Edna Pontellier each are married,...

The Awakening by Kate Chopin explores Edna's journey towards defining herself as a person separate from her husband, children, and domestic life. Edna realizes her desire and her need to define her selfhood. Her awakening, however, fails to free her from the constraints of traditional exp...

The Awakening -- A Moral Dilemma After reading The Awakening by Kate Chopin, one has to wonder if Edna Pontellier is not some heroic female figure who fights for independence but instead an immoral and promiscuous woman who at the end 'gets what she deserves '. Edna was not an ideal...