Belle Isle Park

In The Awakening, Edna Pontellier gradually realizes the societal expectation for her to conform to the female stereotype and attempts to discover freedom instead. Rather than live as a “mother-woman” whose entire existence revolves around only her husband and children, she wishes to discover her own person and live as that woman. In the beginning of the book, Mr. Pontellier criticizes his wife and wakes her up so she can tend to their children in the middle of the night and otherwise fit into…

Kate Chopin’s story The Awakening tells the story of a lady named Edna who has infidelity issues. Edna struggles within a love triangle between her husband, Robert, and Alcee. Edna’s heart longs for Robert, but that relationship ends. The story concludes with Edna swimming out into the ocean without returning. There are several different critical receptions relating to The Awakening. Two of my sources are related and argues that The Awakening wasn’t created for children. The other source…

In The Awakening, Kate Chopin uses the motif of music to describe Edna’s desires of becoming more independent and her mind’s vivid imagery, which subsequently provides a foreshadow. During the party at Madame Lebrun’s home in Grand Isle, Edna breaks away from the party and steps out onto the porch where she is admiring the view of the sea. Eventually, Robert comes to join her and asks her if she’d like to listen to Mademoiselle Reisz play the piano. While he goes to find her, Chopin writes:…

Hallie Amat Mrs. Schroder AP Literature 3 January 2017 Edna’s Isolation in The Awakening Authors frequently use the theme of isolation to demonstrate how a particular society treats people who differ from the norm. Characters’ gender, race, or class often lead to their alienation and can create other problems stemming from that. In The Awakening, protagonist Edna Pontellier’s status as a woman means that society places certain expectations on her behavior, and when she refuses to conform, she…

For a long period of time, women have been repressed, viewed as the lesser sex and claimed as property of men. This made it harder for them to enjoy life and to discover their true selves. In both Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the path to self discovery can be difficult, but can lead to fulfilling endings. Both authors presented how two women from different backgrounds can experience the same struggles and harvest the same desires. Self…

In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier is a character who conforms outwardly, but inside she is questioning her life. She is a wife and mother who challenges her submissive motherhood. While having these duties she inwardly wonders about what her individual self wants. Edna struggles with the inner and outer wants of her life which contributes majorly to the novel. Chopin uses the tension with this conflict to display her message of feminism and women wanting more for their individual…

Journeys through life come in many different forms, yet they all include the same basic progressive steps. They evolve from a dream, to reality, to the inevitable consequences, much like Edna Pontellier. Kate Chopin, in her book The Awakening, utilizes various metaphors of birds to symbolize Edna on her journey, revealing the theme that freedom comes with a price. Chopin opens the book with the description of a caged bird, setting up the metaphor from the start. She describes the bird as a bird…

of their families. Edna and Lucy did not fulfill these expectations. As a mother, Edna was supposed to stay home to look after their home and children. Edna, however, “was not a mother-woman. The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege…

Spring Awakening, originally written in 1891 by Frank Wedekind and adapted more recently by Steven Sater, was performed by the theater department of Wake Forest University in the Scales Fine Arts Center on April 8th, as well as several other days that month. A play about the effects of sexual suppression faced by teenagers in a German town in the 19th century, its topics of sex, suicide, abuse, oppression, and corrupt authority are all still very relevant to the youth of today. In order to…

surroundings. The setting of Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening affects Edna through the location, social norms and time period. The location of “The Awakening” takes place on the Grand Isle off the coast of Louisiana, which is very important to the main character Mrs. Pontellier. Of course, like a majority of islands, the Grand Isle is surrounded by an ocean. Prior to the events of the story, Edna was not an efficient swimmer. However, on page 27 she pushes herself to swim out into the Gulf of…