"The Awakening"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the self-discovering journey of Edna Pontelier in the story "The Awakening" and shows how her life is a depiction of many women in the late 1800's. It discusses the concept of illusions; It shows how she is presented with the illusion that the standard marriage of 1899, with wife subservient to the husband, and completely dedicated to her family, with no real thought for what she might need, is a hollow way to live. Then she explores the illusions that love can bring. She realizes that although her husband loves her and treats her well, the idea that he knows her well is an illusion. She leaves her family and the illusion of society's standards to live a more honest and exploratory life. She falls in love with a young man, but it is only an illusion of love, as he will not shed society's standards and live with her in sin, even though he loves her. Then she engages in a purely physical affair, the opposite of the chaste romance she has had with her new love, which is also an illusion, an incomplete relationship.

From the Paper:

"Edna can take this journey of self-discovery because she marries into the south's Creole culture, a culture where women of the time were assumed to be chaste and trustworthy and were not forced to limit themselves to domestic duties. This results in several seductions. First, Edna is seduced by the idea of freedom from domestic shackles. Eventually she goes much further and separates herself from her former social life completely. In the process she is seduced by the idea that she can also be sexually free, and in spite of being married love anyone she chooses to love, or have a sexual liaison if she chooses to."

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