Edna Pontellier's The Awakening

Improved Essays
The book I read was called The Awakening. Throughout the book interesting things happened. The book is about a young woman named Edna Pontellier. She has a husband and two little boys. As the book progresses Mrs. Pontellier strays away from her husband. She starts to fall for a different man named Robert Lebrun. Throughout the book Mrs. Pontellier tries her best to be closer to Robert. However many different things block Edna from being with Robert Lebrun. Mrs. Pontellier dreams about being with Robert. However Robert leaves for Mexico before Mrs. Pontellier can tell him how she feels. After Robert leaves Edna meets different men that all take a liking to her. Although none of them make her feel like Robert does she starts having a relationship …show more content…
The only thing keeping him back was that she was a married woman. That if Mr. Pontellier was to give her to Robert then they could be together than Mrs. Pontellier tells him that if they each thought that she could be passed around like that they were crazy. Although Robert has come back into her life Alcee Arobin is still in love with Mrs. Pontellier. Even though he still likes Edna she only has eyes for Robert. So when they start hanging out again Robert starts acting different he isn’t very talkative. So when Mrs. Pontellier asks him about it he says that he never wrote a letter to her because he was trying to forget her. He also said she was a married woman. After he tells her his reasoning for not talking to her and acting the way he did they spend the rest of the day together. Soon while they are still with each other Edna has to go see someone Robert tries to get her to stay but she goes anyways. Whenever Edna gets back home Robert is gone he had left a note before he left saying I love you goodbye because I love you. Edna gets upset after this because he left without her knowing and didn’t wait for to get home. So she goes over to Victor’s house at Grand Isle, she asks him to make her fish for supper but while he is going to find the stuff to make it she goes out to the beach. She takes her clothes off and walks out to the ocean and doesn’t turn back

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Edna Dialectical Journal

    • 446 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Robert accompanied Mrs. Pontellier and even convinced her to go bathing with him. Since her time at the Grand Isle, Edna had began to loosen her reserve and embrace her graceful severity of poise and movement which made her different from every other woman. Mrs. Pontellier had met up with Adele and they were talking about old childhood memories including running through fields in Kentucky. Edna was constantly haunted by the figure of a great tragedian and had said that her marriage to Leonce Pontellier was an accident. Mrs. Ratignolle had told Robert to stay away from Edna which offended him because she said that Edna was not like one of them and would take him…

    • 446 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Edna performs the most controversial action of exploring her sexual longings, exemplifying the principle of a woman’s freedom of expressing desires. Her clashes with Adele’s embracing lifestyle and Alcee’s flirtatious attitude throughout the novella assist her with researching these cravings. All through her life, society forces Edna to conceal and cravings which limits her knowledge in physical contact. Everything changes when her interactions with Adele Ratignolle bring forth a new view in communication that is locked away from her. Mrs. Pontellier determines to research these urges, as it allows her to happily express herself.…

    • 211 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He does not give her the respect of a wife and does not want to be a part of her world. Edna experiences “an indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing…

    • 269 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Feminism In The Awakening

    • 201 Words
    • 1 Pages

    The Awakening is a novel by Kate Chopin about a woman’s transformation from an obedient, traditional wife and mother into a self-realized, sexually liberated and independent woman. Despite now being regarded as a classic, when The Awakening was first published, it received shocked reviews, which the novelist never recovered from. Reviewers were stunned by the protagonist’s sense of independence as well as her sexual liberation. This is due to the fact that at the time, even Louisiana law held that wives were the property of their husbands. This is incorporated and reacted strongly toward in the novel when Victorian society never gives Edna a real shot at achieving personal fulfillment, much less being treated as a real person outside of her…

    • 201 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Pontellier is not a mother-woman: she is not one of the "women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it as holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels. " The narrator describes as the perfect example of a mother-woman a neighbor named Adéle Ratignolle, who represents the epitome of idealized femininity. She is voluptuously and romantically beautiful, sews elaborate clothes for her children and is constantly pregnant. Edna. Pontellier dutifully visits her friend to learn how to sew winter undergarments for her children, but is bored despite Robert's presence.…

    • 658 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Robert has left, Mademoiselle Reisz asks Edna if she misses Robert, this causes Edna to have a series of flashbacks. Each flashback represents a connection to Robert that causes Edna to miss Robert. Edna begins to think of how the color and excitement of life seems to have left from her spirit, Edna also wants to constantly talk about Robert with other people. She has begun to go to Madam Lebrun’s apartment to view baby pictures of Robert, mainly to see how Robert developed from a child to a man. When Lebrun receives a letter from Robert Edna becomes jealous even though she was discussed in the letter, this is because Robert didn’t write directly to her.…

    • 211 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Edna's Persuasive Letter

    • 176 Words
    • 1 Pages

    She met someone named Robert Lebrun who was the exact opposite of Leonce because when Edna first met him she thought it was love at first sight. She fell in…

    • 176 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Edna continues to experience a sexual and self-awakening that happened simultaneously. The self-awakening begins as soon as Robert departs for Mexico, where the pain of separation is prevalent as seen through the perspective of Psyche and Eros. As she looks for Robert, she is simultaneously viewing a mirrored image of herself. Once confronting solitude, Edna’s infatuation grows for Robert, as she is looking for letters from him; only does she face disappointment, like Psyche, once she is not mentioned. As Edna visits Mademoiselle Reisz, she is introduced to a symbol of individuation as she states, “the bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings” (521).…

    • 1144 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Leonce Pontellier was also a big part of Edna’s life, Webb states that Leonce was dissatisfied with Edna when she didn’t take care of the kids like a mother during that time should. He continues on and talks about how Edna is still married to Leonce, she falls in love with Robert, but when Robert left she took Alcee as her next lover. Webb explains that Mrs. Highcamp was the woman that brought Edna and Alcee together, but with the absence of her husband and children, she makes it very clear that she has shut them out of her life and now is focusing on herself from now on. He also explains that the three men in Edna’s life work as a negative effect on Edna’s image in the novel, Webb argues that Leonce shuts down Edna’s public signs of individualism, Alcee shows his power as a lover to take over her individuality, and that Robert is the one that more than anything physically tears Edna apart. At the end of his article he discusses how Edna takes her life away and how she can’t possibly take the pain she is feeling away anymore.…

    • 1571 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Edna’s cheating buddy for part of the story she serves as an advocate for Robert to Edna mother of Robert and Victor He reminds Edna of Robert They make Edna remember that that even though she has lost faith in Leonce that she did enjoy her motherhood Edna’s Father Edna’s Competition Potelliers’ Doctor Edna’s Associate selfish, narcissistic selfish, narcissistic devotes her life to her passion:…

    • 1331 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Awakening Final Essay The novel titled The Awakening tells the story of a woman struggling to find herself during a time where society placed restrictions on women’s freedom of expression. The novel, written by Kate Chopin, takes place in the nineteenth century. The main character, Edna Pontellier, is a mother and a wife who is not content with the life she lives. Throughout the novel Edna goes through different stages and deals with many different people that contribute to her “awakening”.…

    • 1021 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Robert is a catalyst for Edna’s awakening. He invokes passion and love into her life. His major role in the novel is to cause Edna to question her current role in society. However he himself is unable to break free of the societal norms and ends up leaving her. Leonce Pontellier is the epitome of patriarchal gender roles in the late 19th century.…

    • 305 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Going forward, Edna decides to take her exploration of sexuality a little further. She decides that she no longer belongs to her husband and experiments with a few men. Although she still has a husband, Edna grows fond of a young man named Robert LeBrun. He moves out of the country for a little while, but Edna still thinks of him despite having a husband. While Robert is gone, Edna entertains herself with a young man named Alcée…

    • 1346 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    The Awakening by Kate Chopin takes place in the late nineteenth century and revolves around a woman named Edna Pontellier who cannot conform to the society in which she lives in. Throughout the novel, Edna slowly breaks free of the reigns in which society holds her to by rebelling against the ideas and morals of motherhood and femininity and chooses love and solitude instead. Early on in the novel, however, Chopin alludes to the existence of Edna's dual life through the following quote, "At a very early period she had apprehended instinctually the dual life-that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions" (13). When analyzing this quote, it is clear that Chopin wanted to establish that Edna is a very complex character…

    • 1638 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the late 1800s, women were still considered the property of their husbands and had very little freedom to do what they pleased. Men had dominant roles in society and were the providers for the family. Women were expected to stay at home in order to care for the children and keep the house clean for their husband. A wife who did not cherish her children or her husband during this time period was very unusual and was frowned upon by society. Edna Pontellier, the main character of The Awakening by Kate Chopin, did not feel an attachment towards her children and married her husband, Léonce Pontellier, out of pure convenience.…

    • 879 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics