Symbolism In The Awakening By Kate Chopin

In society, a women’s job is to cater, or serve the common good, and also sacrifice their needs at all times. Many authors use conflict as an advantage for adding meaning to their story. In Kate Chopin’s, The Awakening, Enda finds herself torn between being who she wants to be and who she has to be based on society’s standards. Through symbolism, Chopin is able to use the two conflicting forces to show her innermost desires for freedom and how society suppresses her desires, which ultimately causes her go and commit suicide. The reader is introduced to Edna Pontellier, a mother and a wife who fits in with the distinctive Creole society, but “There were days when she was unhappy...” (Chopin 255). Edna’s search for her newfound independence is first shown when Edna lets go of the “mother-woman” image. Chopin lets the reader know, “Mrs. Pontillier was not a mother-woman. The role mother-woman seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle” (Chopin 39). And to further understand Edna, Chopin uses the symbolism of birds, clothing and her learning to swim. …show more content…
In The Awakening, Edna finds herself searching and yearning for some type of freedom and independence. The birds are first introduced in chapter 1, when Mr. Pontillier walks into Madame Lebrun’s, “A green and yellow parrot which hung outside the door… the parrot could only speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody could understand” (Chopin 10). The caged parrot exhibits Edna’s feeling of being entrapped in the mother-woman role. Also, because of the parrot’s lack of communication, it matches Edna’s inability to speak about how she truly feels, which causes nobody to understand