"The Awakening"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the female characters in "The Awakening," written by Kate Chopin. It shows how the characters share certain experiences and attitudes with their creator, both for good and ill. The paper begins by providing a background to the life and writing career of Kate Chopin. It then focuses on the two characters of Edna Pontellier and Adele Ratignolle in the book.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Kate Chopin
The Awakening
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"Edna is the central character and also the woman who mirrors certain aspects of Chopin's life. She is a woman who feels enslaved by her domestic role and who chafes so at this role that she finally prefers to commit suicide rather than continue, even after she has freed herself from her reticence to express herself and to do so through her artistic endeavors. She is first a frustrated artist, but more deeply she is a frustrated human being who cannot abide in a world that treats her as less important because she is a woman. Her relationship with her husband has long been damaging to he, and whie her relationships with Robert and Arobin free her from certain ideas and help awaken her to a different vision of herself, those affairs are also destructive in the end. Edna is a woman who cannot live in the sort of society in which she finds herself, and she makes the choice to leave life rather than do so. This extreme reaction is not why the novel was treated so badly when first published, and the reason it was can be found in a society that did not want to recognize the singular needs and abilities of women outside the narrow role given them in the home."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Allen, Priscilla. "Old Critics and New: The Treatment of Chopin's 'The Awakening." In The Authority of Experience, Arlyn Diamond and Lee R. Edwards (eds.), 224-338. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977.
• Barrett, Michele. "Introduction." In Virginia Woolf on Women and Writing. Reading: The Women's Press, 1992.
• Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Electronic Edition. Documenting the American South. August 7, 2007. http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/chopinawake/chopin.html.
• Chopn, Kate. The Awakening. New York: Bantam, 1992.
• Cutter, Martha J. Unruly Tongue: Identity and Voice in American Women's Writing, 1850-1930. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1999.

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