Edna

around what might happen if a woman challenged the expectations of a subservient wife, and examines how women were treated in the 1890s through the interactions of three characters: the motherly Adele, the spinster Reisz, and the revelation-experiencing Edna, who tries to make a switch from a mother to her own being. Although it wasn’t recognized as the transcendent work it’s known as today until much later, The Awakening brilliantly displays the issues of gender inequality, and then points out…

beginning is in the Grand Isle, a small beach in Louisiana. The Pontellier family is vacationing there for the entire summer and it is there that the family meets the friends that will be major characters for the remainder of the novel. The sea is where Edna escapes reality and becomes the free woman she wants to be, not the controlled wife she is made out to be, so it is important that the beach be an established setting early on in the book. “The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing,…

Kate Chopin, in her short story The Awakening, vividly describes the timeline of Edna from her immediate arrival in New Orleans, to the beginnings of her culture shock and awakening, to her tragic suicide. Upon her arrival to Grand Isle Resort in New Orleans she meets Robert and Madame Ratignolle, both of whom take her breath away, or as the book puts it “left her stunned in amazement”. Compared to her life growing up in the slower small towns of Kentucky, the upbeat large city of New Orleans…

Awakening, Chopin relays the controversial story of a woman, Edna Pontellier and her spiritual journey. When Edna refuses to obey her husband, after being scolded, suggests she has become awakened to the oppressive nature of her husband, and the institution of marriage in general. Edna’s struggles and resistance says to the reader that she is aware of a better way of living. She thinks about the gap between her feelings and what society demands. Edna says, “By all the codes which I am acquainted…

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 married. Edna then later moved out of her family home into a pigeon house and started to do art. Happiness was found through her process of figuring out…

is a story where a woman named Edna is not really happy with the way her life is going. She wants to be free and capable of doing whatever she wants to do. She comes across Adèle which is the perfect nineteenth-century woman, she is a stay at home mom taking care of her family. Edna realizes that it is not what she wants, to stay at home with children. After that, she meets Madame Reisz who is a single and a free woman, she is a musician and does what she wants. Edna than realizes that she does…

the Gulf Islands in which Edna Pontellier and her family vacationed in the novel. Castro states that literary naturalism represents the limitations placed on the human will, but scholars have been unable to take account of the Gulf Islands’ spatial histories in the novel (Castro 68). Castro claims the utopianism of the island was undermined by a hurricane that hit the gulf coast in 1893, which was ever present in Chopin’s…

expected to behave and how their husbands treat them. Both authors also talk about the limited roles the wife has in her family as well as the male roles. These similarities from both stories reveal how women are viewed. In The Awakening, the wife, Edna Pontellier was financially dependent of her husband, Leoncé Pontellier. He provides the house on Esplanade Street in New Orleans, the food, a maid and a chef. Although Mrs. Pontellier worked as a receptionist, she only worked on Tuesdays, which…

that have played a role in evolutionary accounts of depression.” That is an accurate statement with the protagonist characters living in an antagonist society in The Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening. The woman narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper and Edna Pontellier in The Awakening exhibit levels of depression and anxiety that caused them to feel entrapped as it relates to their identity. Each story had a common theme of “don’t let someone hid who you are.” Both shared characteristics that…

main character in the novel – Edna Pontellier, a respectable Presbyterian from Kentucky, lives in Creole society in Louisiana. In general, as a wife and mother, she is supposed to take care of her kids and husband. However, she does not do that way. Curiously, she tries to discover herself as an identity independent woman. Besides, Mrs. Pontellier tries to discover herself as an independent woman, even though she already became a mother and wife. In the novel, Edna Pontellier also said, “ I…