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The Awakening The novel by Kate Chopin is an attempt to rebel against what is known in literature and in life itself as masculinity. The essence of the Edna Pontellier protest is that she does not want to accept the traditional roles of women in the society as those of the men subordinate sub-group members and engaged in the domestic affairs, growing up children and cooking only. Awakening itself comes through the permanent struggle with the conventional attitude towards woman. Through the struggle of finding independence and self-control the woman is thus accessed to numerous other counts of discovery i. e. making her own mind up serving as an independent person and also breaking from the traditional superior / inferior relationships established by the male gender. 1 The self-esteem versus the conventional male attitude towards the woman is in focus of the conflict.
The Edna's story is the story of transformation of the obedient housewife to a person who is alive with strength of character and emotions which she no longer has to repress. This metamorphosis is shaped by her surroundings. Just as her behavior is more shocking and horrifying because of her position in society, it is that very position which causes her to feel restrained and makes her yearn to rebel. 2 The metamorphosis is caused by the re-estimation of her own personality as an individual versus decoration of her husband. Mrs. Pontellier was beginning 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. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight -- perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman. 3 Th H protest is displayed against all the attributes of the conventional position of a woman in the society.
Her love affair with her personal attendant Robert Lebrun is not just a vacation love intrigue but a protest against the conventions of the society. It is a protest against a position taken by her husband You are burnt beyond recognition looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage 4. The society is completely hostile to her and she is fighting to conform to it. Her husband treats her as a symbol of his prosperity but not as a human being. Her feelings and emotions are not taken into consideration. She rebels against the Cell habits and traditions provided by her husband.
The conventional marriage the author associates with some kind of oppression against which Edna rebels. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels. 5 In her protest she opposes the maternity to personality. This protest is not against the maternity as a human category but against the attributes the society granted this category. "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. I can't make it more clear; it's only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me. " 6 There is nothing more valuable than the human life but society uses the maternity to limit a woman within certain conventional frames which sometimes contradict the essence of a person. Actually this is not too much important; Edna associates the artificial role which society gave to mothers with one more way of the womens oppression. Actually it is not a role given to the mothers but the way the society wants to see the womens behavior and as soon as the most married women are mothers it is some kind of a code to be followed by the married women, treating a woman as an attribute of a successful man.
The protest against the inequality of men and women and an aspiration to take the equal position in the society is presented in the episode with the sea. There is the space of freedom, woman is along in it and there is nobody to dictate the conventional rules and artificial laws. A feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant import had been given her to control the working of her body and her soul. She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength. She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before. 7 No woman had swum before means no woman had ever dared to rebel against accepting the current state of things; all women had taken their positions as they were. Actually Edna lives two lives; the first one is that of a married woman obeying the commonly accepted principles of the society.
These principles are unjust and false but a woman has to obey them. The second one is her inner life which is in contradiction with the social life. This inner life is a life of the freedom striving human being. If inner, i. e.
spiritual and outer mundane existences are in accord then Edna would live her life more or less successfully. The tragedy of Edna is in her protest against the hypocrisy of the so-called successful life. Her spiritual life overcame her outer mother-woman image. She is rebelling against Society and religion, as forms of patriarchy which blind women to the restrictions of their gendered identities and promote the "angel in the house" image of perfection as their happiest role 8 Even her suicide is the protest, a protest against the society. Her death is the action to show that it is she who controls her own life. Her husband as well as any other man does not have any power over her life.
Her suicide is the tragic action aimed to confirm her freedom, freedom to live and freedom to die. Neither society nor religion interpreting the suicide as a deadly sin has any power over a woman and her spiritual world. It is very indicative that she takes her own life within the sea which she associates with freedom that had never been experienced by any woman before. Citation Raj Parikh, Jen Thompson Chopin Kate Ibid Ibid Ibid Ibid Erin E.
MacDonald Bibliography Chopin Kate. The Awakening. Available at web retrieved 13. 04. 2006 Raj Parikh, Unearthing Subjugation, available at web retrieved 13. 04. 2006 Jen Thompson, The Awakening, available at web retrieved 13. 04. 2006 Erin E. MacDonald, 1999, "NECESSARILY VAGUE": KATE CHOPIN'S GENDER-AWAKENING, available at web retrieved 13. 04. 2006
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