Edna's Influence In The Awakening

Adele Ratignolle serves as a foil to Edna, since she is the ultimate embodiment of the perfect wife and mother. Adele belongs to a group of women “who idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels” (Chopin 10). Adele is everything that Edna is not as a mother. Despite this, Edna and Adele find themselves in similar situations. Adele too cannot escape her children, so much so that “she has no way of conceiving of herself as a separate person” (Bogarad 160). Edna herself recognizes Adele’s entrapment, feeling “pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor of blind contentment…” (Chopin 74). The only difference between Edna and Adele is that while Edna rejects her role, Adele blindly embraces it. Conversely, Mademoiselle Reisz is unmarried with no children. She is free. Mademoiselle Reisz expresses herself through her music and she is not afraid to reveal her emotions, causing her to be seen as an “eccentric, unpleasant ‘old maid’” (Bogarad 160). Despite this, Mademoiselle Reisz’s lifestyle is what Edna desires for herself. When Edna attempts to paint she finds she only is able to when she is feeling content. She wants to express her feelings towards Robert yet they are suppressed. Mademoiselle Reisz does not face these challenges, proving that the

Another reason Mademoiselle Reisz is significant to Edna is because she is the only one who knows about and Robert and Edna’s love. Mademoiselle explains Robert’s love for Edna, “ It is because he loves you, poor fool, and is trying to forget you, since you are not free to listen to him or belong to him ” (95). Edna’s love for Robert is the reason why she quickly becomes uninvolved with her family and the life she is socially supposed to have. She does what she wants with disregard to anything her husband has to say.

The final reason for Edna’s escape from her troublesome life is the failure of her relationship with Robert. Edna was able to find some form of escape through her desire and hope of being with Robert, but when those plans fell through Edna feels as if she has nothing to look forward to, nothing to live for in life. Robert realizes that he and Edna will never be able to have a true

A foil for Adele Ratignolle, Mademoiselle Reisz serves as a living example of an entirely self-sufficient woman, who is ruled by her art and her passions, rather than by the expectations of society. A small homely woman, unmarried and childless, Mademoiselle Reisz is a talented pianist and somewhat of a recluse. She represents the anti-mother along independence and freedom. The first time she is introduced in the novel she is introduced as being “eccentric and quarrelsome”, from that we are able to infer that she is unlike the other women. Later as the novel continues to progress from her house and manner of expression we are again able to infer that she is unlike the other Creole women. For her home is an apartment above everyone, with a view, that is disagreeable and often cold. Mademoiselle Reisz is the woman that Edna could have become should she have remained independent of her husband and children and lived to old age.

The Awakening by Kate Chopin ends with the death of the main character, Edna Pontellier. Stripping off her clothes, she swims out to sea until her arms can no longer support her, and she drowns. It was not necessarily a suicide, neither was it necessarily the best option for escaping her problems.

Later on in the novel, Edna speaks about how Mademoiselle Reisz checks her shoulder blades for strength because “the bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings” (Chopin 79). While many characters shut Reisz off because of how strange she is, Edna visits her because of their unspoken, mutual understanding of the significance of the potential power and precedence that her true, inner identity could hold if she let it fly free. At the end of the novel, Chopin describes a “bird with a broken wing” who circles “disabled down, down to the water” (108) to reflect how the strength of Edna’s inner identity breaks her because her spirit is too weak to maintain her desires alongside her realization that she could never be truly happy again in this time of unbreaking oppression and possession. Elz notes that if Edna continues to live that she will always be moving from relationship to relationship to satisfy her true desires, even though - in contrast - she wishes for her existence to not be defined by her relationships with men. “Like the mockingbird,” Elz continues, Edna “insists on her way” and therefore refuses to accept the roles society pushes on her and, in result, commits suicide as her inner identity wins and proves that she can not be controlled (20).

Although Robert left to get away from Edna, he might have actually made things worse. He promised to write to her, but never did. By Robert not writing to her, it left Edna in agony. She longed for him even more when she did not hear from him. Not knowing that Edna would eventually read the letters, he wrote to Mademoiselle Reisz unintentionally professing his love for Mrs. Pontellier. After reading the letters, Edna realized that the feelings were mutual. Edna came to the conclusion that she wanted to get away from her house, husband, and anything that reminded her of the such so she decided to move into a small apartment around the corner.

In the iconic debated novel “The Awakening”, Kate Chopin’s novel takes place in the Victorian Era, which is in the 19th- century, similarly the novel was published in 1899. Edna is depicted as a woman longing for more, a woman who was looking for more than just a life of complacency and living in the eyes of society. The story uses Edna to exemplify the expectations of women during this era. For example, a woman’s expression of independence was considered immoral. Edna was expected to conform to the expectations of society but the story reveals Edna’s desires which longed for independence in a state of societal dominance. Throughout The Awakening, Chopin’s most significant symbol,

Edna’s deliberate sacrifice is that she chooses a man who has her relive her young fantasies and mind over her husband and family who demonstrate that responsibility and maturity dictate her life. Before Edna meets Robert, the man who reminisces youth, she has her up and downs with her husband but has a consistent and regular lifestyle with her family. She constantly praises her children over everything but however,

Robert leaves Edna behind because Edna does not give a clear answer to his marriage

Lastly, Edna explores self-expression in her own physical passion. Her romantic relationships with Alcee and, most importantly, Robert, give her the means to express love and passion she had preciously repressed. When Edna first explores these sexual feelings she, as Davis states, "succumbs to the seductions of a roué, Alcee Arobin, without

She was pressured to marry Leonce by her father and older sister. Along with marriage came the pressure to have children. She is forced into these roles but never actually succumbs to them. Edna not only has Madame Ratignolle's friendship and her marriage to wake her up to her dreams and emotions, her affairs wake up to her desires. The way the different male characters treat her reminds her that she will never happily fit into the role of a wife and mother, therefore awakening her.

Edna’s indulgence in art exemplifies the importance she has placed on personal fulfillment, an attribute of feminist ideals. Edna characterizes herself as an artist. This demonstrates her desire to be set free from the familial expectations placed on her. Art represents a freedom of expression. Edna’s association with her artistic passion, not necessarily ability, foreshadows her desire to break free from society’s norms. Edna seeks the guidance of a liberated woman, Mademoiselle Reisz, who is the ideal feminist woman that Edna aspires to be. Reisz connects with her artistic hobbies through music. Her music inspires and provides her with the strength not to live under the maternal expectation. Edna enjoys painting although she does not consider

Throughout “The Awakening”, Edna is immersed in a constant clash with society over the significance of the difference between her life and her self. To Edna, the question of whether or not she would die for her children is somewhat simple. Edna attempts to explain this concept to her good friend, Adele Ratignolle, but to no avail, “I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself” (Chopin 62). Not only does Edna consider her life unessential, she categorizes it as equal with material objects such as money. The idea of self, on the other hand, lies on a completely different level in Edna’s mind. The most important goal to Edna in her life is the journey to discover her true character. The idea that her inner self is more essential than life or even her children causes Edna to stray farther from the social constraints of the typical domestic woman. Kathleen M. Streater weighs in on Edna’s situation and placement in

Chopin confirms this by saying, “Mrs. Pontellier was not a woman given to confidences, a characteristic hitherto contrary to her nature. Even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself…” (Chopin, 2005, Chapter 7, para. 1). Over the summer, even though she was already married, Edna met a young man by the name of Robert Lebrun and surprisingly fell in love. “The action was at first a little confusing to Edna, but she soon lent herself readily to the Creole’s gentle caress. She was not accustomed to an outward and spoken expression of affection…” (Chopin, 2005, Chapter 7, para, 19) meaning Robert gave Edna the kind of attention that she never got from her husband, Leonce Pontellier. She became ignorant of her surroundings and carried on into this “fantasy” (Chopin, 2005). Edna’s passions became overpowering to her self-control. This was a feeling that she had not felt with her husband even when she married him. Robert decided at the spur of the moment, he would leave on a business trip to Mexico without telling Edna. This caused Edna to feel even more alone and confused because she did not enjoy being married. Chopin proclaims, “Her marriage to Leonce Pontellier was purely an accident, in the respect resembling many other marriages which masquerade as the decrees of Fate” (Chopin, 2005, Chapter 7, para. 24). Her husband was never home and the man she ultimately loved left her