British Isles

and follows the spiritual journey of Edna Pontellier, a twenty-eight-year-old wife and mother living in New Orleans. While in Grand Isle for the summer with her husband, Léonce, and their two children, she finds herself displeased with her marriage and the conventional behavior it demands from her. Edna was very different from the other women residing at Grand Isle that summer. Not only was she a Kentucky Presbyterian rather than a Creole Catholic, but she was not a “mother-woman.” Kate…

Author, Kate Chopin, in her novel, The Awakening, composes a story about a woman named Edna who is in a passionless marriage and is realizing her sexuality. Director, Mike Newell, in his film, Mona Lisa Smile, illustrates a story about a woman named Katherine who is an art professor at Wellesley College teaching female students about breaking out of society’s roles. Chopin’s purpose is to bring to light to how some housewives felt trapped in the lives they were supposed to live during the 1890’s…

Oppression of Female Independence In a society where women are controlled by patriarchal expectations, true independence is not an option. Kate Chopin witnessed and experienced these restrictions first hand during the 19th century, yet she refused to conform. She detailed this restriction in many of her works, and in The Awakening, her protagonist, Edna, goes against social constraints in a journey of self-discovery. Along the way, Chopin utilizes literary elements to track Edna’s progress while…

Independence and the individuality were important to the way Chopin developed the two main characters in both the novel and short story. Women being oppressed in their marriage was a main theme within the literary pieces. Though Chopin represented their personality and life differently. Edna Pontellier in The Awakening made the decision to find her individuality after she was married and had two children. She made the conscious choice to have an affair with another man when she was still…

With The Awakening being published in the year 1899, it can be deemed as an early work of feminism several years prior to the successes of the first wave feminist movement which granted women the right to vote in 1920. Chopin’s work could potentially have been inspired by the first wave feminist movement which proposed legislation in 1878. I think Chopin is finding inspiration from the first wave feminist movements and she is reflecting her progressive views onto the main character Edna. Edna…

The Awakening by Kate Chopin is about a woman’s transformation from an obedient traditional housewife and mother into a self-realized, sexually liberate and independent woman. The novel published in 1899 back in a time when women were not thought of as people but as property of their husband’s. Throughout the novel Edna Pontieller expresses her progress, in The Awakening, as a new woman by using the symbolism of the caged birds, art and music, houses, and the sea. From the very beginning of…

Literary Criticism: The Awakening and the Failure of the Psyche It is apparent that one can correlate Greek mythology to The Awakening when reading Franklin’s criticism. Franklin associates the paradigm of Psyche to the pathological, internal struggle of Edna, where the fear of the confrontation of solitude is prevalent. Franklin first explains the irony in the title of The Awakening, given the fact that Edna sleeps, living in a world filled with fantasy rather than being psychologically and…

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is an artfully crafted piece of literature in the late nineteenth century. During this time, The Awakening is seen as vulgar and distasteful to many critics, but the book gave a much-needed “eye opener” to the perspective of women’s suffrage. This story is told in the eyes of Edna Pontellier, a wife and mother, who struggles with the ideas of freedom and self-awareness. Society’s expectations of women are to be a “stay-at-home” caretaker of the home and children…

The desire to belong is integral to human nature, but so is curiosity. The Awakening is a Victorian era novel by Kate Chopin following Edna Pontellier’s untimely search for social, financial, and emotional independence. Her character is highly reflective in nature. At one point she notes that while she may conform to appease those watching, she secretly questions the behaviour she witnesses in herself and others. Chopin examines the disparity between outward conformity and inner doubt through…

master her feeling by not to showing outward and spoken feelings of affections, either in herself or in others. This common custom seems to be understood among wealthy married women and their husbands. However, one summer while vacationing at the Grand Isle, the reserved manner Edna always enveloped began to loosen a little and her soul began to awaken. That summer, a young man named Robert Lebrun stirred Edna’s…