Kate Chopin's The Awakening

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Kate Chopin, an American feminist author, created historically relevant works during the literary naturalism time period. Published in 1899, The Awakening has become one of her most famous realistic fiction works. The novel’s plot focuses on a southern woman named Edna Pontellier, who lives as a wife and mother in 19th century New Orleans. Chopin’s book is one of the first non-condescending American novels that explicitly addresses a highly controversial topic: women’s rights. Attributed to the thematic and stylistic choices incorporated in her work, Chopin evokes numerous mixed criticisms from both historical and contemporary critics. Thus, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening defies naturalistic conventions, which is primarily accomplished through protagonist Edna Pontellier’s defiance against social expectations. The powerful themes depicted …show more content…
She lived entirely with independent, intelligent women; her mother [widowed], grandmother, and great-grandmother (Massie). Utilizing the change of perspective that Edna encounters as the novel progresses, Chopin seeks to emphasize various manners in which a female could retain independence regardless of societal expectation. To reinforce this idea, the author depicts Mrs. Pontellier’s as self-motivated in her removal from those around her; although this still addresses consequences associated with personal desolation in the novel, it also expresses a sense of empowerment that comes with self-exploration (Massie). Therefore, The Awakening reflects the elements of literary understanding associated with the time period to a great extent because Chopin unequivocally contrasts those philosophies. She accomplishes this through a characterization of Edna’s desires and societal limitations for independence as a human

Kate Chopin's The Awakening

When Kate Chopin published her book, The Awakening, in 1899, she was already a well-known and respected author. However, the story was widely rejected by most critics as scandalous and indecent, specifically in the Chicago Times Herald, in which it was written that “it was not necessary for a writer of so great refinement and poetic grace to enter the over-worked field of sex-fiction." However, this was not because her novel was, in fact, a raunchy and vulgar novel intent on reveling in promiscuity…

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Individualism In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

the major themes of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. The three main female characters of the story help to show the views of women to society, with Madame Ratignolle showing the example of the perfect woman, Mademoiselle Reisz representing the opposite of a proper woman of the time, and Edna representing the changing views of women and their roles. This is a prime example of how the role of women has changed over the course of the century and centuries before. The novel, the awakening was based in the late…

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Masculinity In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

IR Journal #2, The Awakening Female, approximately half of the world's population can identify easily with this word. Despite the numbers, women value as a minority despite their importance to all of the human populace. Kate Chopin explicated on the realization a woman reached in her life, a realization of the inequality of her own situation, in The Awakening. Kate Chopin conveys the bearings of women in the 19th century through symbolism. Chopin uses symbolism through cigars that represent…

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Kate Chopin's The Awakening

belongs to her owner, not herself” (Hall, pg 13-14). Women lose all rights in this society in which the female have no say in their lives. So when Kate Chopin contradicts the women’s role of the 19th century in The Awakening through Edna Pontellier’s constant incongruity that people are bound to be shocked. People of the19th century thought The Awakening was unhealthy due to it’s emotional, mental, physical, and social aspects; however, it is not unhealthy. Women in the 19th century were known to have…

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The Role Of Feminism In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

During the turn of the century, Kate Chopin, a rising author, published one of her most controversial novels, titled The Awakening. The Awakening, almost immediately after it was published, was mired in heavy backlash against its non-conformist, feminist ideals. Although venerated by realist writers throughout the 20th century, the novel, and Chopin herself, was ostracized from communities across the south. It portrayed feminist ideals that would appear in 1920s feminist movements and would be held…

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Symbolism In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

controlled. Not only through mandatory subservience to men, but through an oppression of expression and free thought. Kate Chopin, in her fictional novel The Awakening explores what it means to be a Victorian woman. She does so through the romance, thoughts, love, and exploits of young woman Edna Pontellier, highlighting the ways in which she is controlled and her childlike renewal, or awakening, into becoming a free-thinking individual. Chopin successfully does this through rhetoric and stylistic strategies…

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Symbols In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

Chopin uses symbols in order to show what Mrs. Sommers' life had been before. In the beginning the story tells us "...a feeling of importance such as she had not enjoyed for years."(Chopin 1) while describing the fact that she had come in the possession of fifteen dollars. This shows that before she had been married she was somewhat wealthy. she also is shown to recognize a somewhat popular magazine. This shows that she had money to spend on magazines before. lastly she is able to socialize with…

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Sexism In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

Thus, Kate Chopin validates once again that without the pressure of upholding society’s expectation women can live a happier life. Edna moving into her own house marked the first step of her independence and her choice to live free of society’s rule, in the pigeon…

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Conformity In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

certain activities. Each person comes to a point where they feel lost, lonely, and confined. They do not feel as if they are a priority. Similar to those in today’s society, Edna Pontellier feels confined and as if she can not express herself. The Awakening by Kate Chopin follows Mrs. Pontellier during her summer spent at Grand Isle and the following time she spends at her home in New Orleans. At Grand Isle, Edna experiences an illuminating moment when she swims extremely far out into the water. This realization…

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Individualism In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

We are taught from an early onset to choose in its most simplistic way “right from wrong,” to make decisions subconsciously correct just because we know better. Things that encounter themselves organically like looking both ways when crossing a street, or knowing not to touch something scorching with your bare hands. Women in the 19th century were taught to do as men said, it came to them as an instinct. A women was meant to marry, raise and care for the home. But some women defied this ideology…

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