by Kate Chopin
(bio and other
books)
Edna Pontellier spends her summers on Grand Isle, a
fashionable place for the wealthy. She lives there
with her husband and children, in a dull existence
with no identity of her own. But something happens
to Edna one summer. She grows tired. She
practically burst with the feeling that she must
live before she dies and that she has yet to really
lived at all! She emerges into vibrancy and
womanhood only to do the unthinkable in the end.
The story begins with Edna on the beach while her
husband, Robert Lebrun, contemplates whether
he should spend the evening at his club, which would
benefit them socially, or dine with his family.
This is the reader's first insight to the importance Mr. LaBrun places on his social standing.
It is quickly understood that Edna does not share
her husband need for societal gains. The book
grows more intriguing as the tension mounts between
Edna and her husband. As long as she takes her
social duties seriously, he is happy. It is when
she chooses to ignore her social obligations,
however, that their relationship and the story takes
its most interesting turn.
In writing The Awakening, Kate Chopin was
well ahead of her time. The novel was met with a
great deal of controversy. Even fans of her work
prior to this novel, shunned her. She was a pioneer
creating women characters beyond the role of wife
and mother. She wrote about women’s feelings,
sexuality, and independence. It took America
decades to catch up with Kate Chopin. It is
important to add that Chopin used a lot of symbols
in all of her work and that The Awakening is full of
them. These symbols serve to add meaning to the
text and to underline some subtle points.
Understanding the meaning of these symbols is vital
to a full appreciation of the story. Some of the
major symbols include birds, art, sleep, piano
playing, the gulf, the moon, and learning to swim.
Quotes from
The Awakening:
“The very first chords which Mademoiselle Reisz
struck upon the piano sent a keen tremor down Mrs.
Pontellier's spinal column. It was not the first
time she had heard an artist at the piano. Perhaps
it was the first time she was ready, perhaps the
first time her being was tempered to take an impress
of the abiding truth...She saw no pictures of
solitude, of hope, of longing, or of despair. But
the very passions themselves were aroused within her
soul, swaying it, lashing it, as the waves daily
beat upon her splendid body. She trembled, she was
choking, and the tears blinded her."
"For the first time, she recognized the symptoms of
infatuation which she had felt incipiently as a
child, as a girl in her early teens, and later as a
young woman. The recognition did not lesson the
reality, the poignancy of the revelation by any
suggestion or promise of instability. The past was
nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was
willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she
never attempted to penetrate.”
(buy
The Awakening)
(buy
Approaches to Teaching The Awakening)
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