An analysis of kate chopins novel awakening

It not only enables them to keep abreast of the times; it qualifies them to furnish in their own personality a good bit of the motive power to the mad pace. They are fortunate beings. They do not need to apprehend the significance of things.

In Chapter X, for example, Edna swims out into the ocean, only to feel a "certain ungovernable dread. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult! Yet even as Chopin thus alludes to the chaotic nature of the sea, she also draws attention to the sea as a source of life and new birth.

Throughout the novel, the sea is almost a character in itself; Chopin makes many references to its "voice," which calls to and even seduces Edna into her newly "awakened" life. Returning again to Chapter VI, perhaps the clearest statement of this aspect of the sea for the book: In this scene, the sea clearly represents new birth, as Edna enters the waters "naked in the open air," as vulnerable as a newborn infant.

Indeed, Edna herself feels "like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known.

All about Kate Chopin: Literary Analysis Of Kate Chopin's The Awakening

Thus, the sea stands for freedom, even as Edna is-presumably; for fullest thematic impact, the text itself does not specify-drowning in it. The sea is both life and death; indeed, there can be no "real" life for Edna without the death of her old "life. If Edna is experiencing a "fall," it is what some Christian traditions refer to as a "happy fall" or felix culpa, "happy fault": Sleep and wakefulness also serve as powerful metaphors throughout the book-not surprising, given its title!

For Edna, to be awake is "to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her.

The Awakening Quotes by Kate Chopin

To be awake is, in a sense, to be enlightened. At times, Chopin makes the metaphor explicit; for instance, see the "Mass" Edna celebrates after she wakes up in Chapter XIII see comments in "Summary and Analysis" for this chapter -having literally awakened from her nap, Edna metaphorically awakens to the vivid details of the world about her, and she asks, like a feminine Rip Van Winkle, "How many years have I slept?

Chopin notes that Edna "had done all the thinking which was necessary" to realize her fundamental isolation from this old world, and her need to enter a new one, "when she lay awake upon the sofa till morning. She is, however, welcomed by the sea into a pure kind of "sleep" as the sea, like a mother soothing a drowsy child, is "enfolding [her] body in its soft, close embrace.The Awakening by Kate Chopin is the first book that I am featuring on The Invisible Mentor blog for Banned Books Week.

Edna and Leonce Pontellier, who have been married for six years are spending the summer at a cottage in Grand Isle just outside of New Orleans.

There are other families who vacation. Students examine Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening to see in what ways it reflects attributes of literary realism, local color or regionalism, with special attention to the Louisiana setting and Creole culture.

The Awakening is Kate Chopin’s novel about a married woman seeking greater personal freedom and a more fulfilling life. Condemned as morbid, vulgar, and disagreeable when it appeared in , it is today acclaimed as an essential American book.

Chopins’ The Awakening is a story of the emotional journey of the protagonist, Edna Pontellier, who is a young Kentuckian woman of twenty-eight married to Leonce Pontellier, a successful New Orleans businessman, with . Critical Analysis: Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" Essay Words 8 Pages In the novel The Awakening, Kate Chopin () uses deep symbolism to show how the main character, Edna Pontellier, discovers her own independence in the society in which she lived.

Chopin wrote The Awakening in fairly formal prose that conveys a certain sense of gravity to the story. This seriousness is exacerbated by the novel’s point of view—the third person omniscient Writing Style.