Sexuality In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

Realism Edna, from The Awakening, is an example of sexuality being treated directly in Realist literature. In past times sexuality would be only alluded to or unused altogether as a way to show the purity of the women. Edna has three men that are potential sexual partners; one she is married to, one she loves, and one she has no more than a shallow interest in. After the one she has little interest in, kisses the back of her hand and leaves “She felt somewhat like a woman who in a moment of passion is betrayed into an act of infidelity, and realizes the significance of the act without being wholly awakened from its glamour” (622). Even though she is not having sex in this part of the story, it is suggested that she is thinking about it when she uses the term infidelity to describe the kiss. She describes the infidelity as glamourous, which would be thought of as immoral in literature before this time period. After she feels that she has been unfaithful, she reveals that does not feel bad about her husband, but the man she is in love with. This shows she is open to more than one person not just emotionally, but sexually as well. The traditions over her time do not hold Edna back from her sexual nature, as it did with other women. One of the focal points of the story is that she has become sexually awakened, and it is treated directly throughout. Naturalism The Open Boat exemplifies the thought that humans …show more content…
High Modernism is a type of Modernism that uses allusions to classic literature and complex writing to make the reader work for the meaning of the poem, along with other characteristics of Modernist poetry like unusual form and shocking content. Many lines in Hugh Selwyn Mauberley are allusions to Greek mythology, Homer’s Odyssey, or are in another language.
His true Penelope was Flaubert,
He fished by obstinate