Example research essay topic: House Of Mirth Chopin The Awakening - 1,084 words

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James Roche Senior Thesis 1 June 1999 Love in Stormy Relationships The inability to attain love in ones lifetime as proven in the novels of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton, due to the truth that marriages no longer base themselves upon love as the primary prerogative; rather, put priority upon the superficial desires of avarice and hubris, created by the social constraints of their society. Both Kate Chopin's The Awakening Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth display how love eludes man during his life using the main character as parallels to one person. Characters whom are placed into a predicament to which the only solution becomes death, allowing them to escape the binds of society and become free to love without restraint. The characters Edna Pontellier and Lily Bart found love outside the bounds of which society would extend for them, one outside her marriage and the other outside her class. These situations make it impossible for love to succeed and thus, the main characters are left without attaining love because love cant conquer all.

In novels written by men the hero finally chooses an apostasy which promises both personal and artistic fulfillment. Almost always in novels written by women, however, the same struggle ends up in madness or suicide. This significant difference between male and female images in literature reflects and reinforces the cultural roles which men and women assume. Kate Chopin's The Awakening is still the clearest statement of the feminine dilemma that we have. (C. Board, TCLC, vol. 5) These roles explain the ending to The Awakening, the prison created by gender-typing offers the female very little opportunity to reach their love and so without it they are then left with little else to cling to upon the earth. Upon breaking this tradition Edna was offered little more than this piece of advice: The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.

It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth. (Chopin, The Awakening, p. 110) And this became of that advice, The water of the Gulf stretched out before her, gleaming with the million lights of the sun. The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude. All along the white beach, up and down, there was no living thing in sight. A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water. This quote foreshadows the outcome of Edna's attempt to break from tradition, it suggests her death. Using such inviting imagery to describe the sea and the reoccurring reference to the bird allow us to formulate an idea as to what happened to Edna, to hint at the inevitability of her suicide.

Imprisonment, a theme threaded throughout House of Mirth. The imprisonment of women by their roles in society and marriage. This institute of marriage becomes a prison for Wharton's characters; one from which the only escape comes in death or divorce; an escape into or out of a male-dominated world. Lily Bart (heroine of House of Mirth), never marries and finds her prison in society, its in acceptance of an individual female, an unmarried female.

This lifestyle creates confrontation between social convention appropriateness versus the individual; conforming to society and being accepted admired or breaking free at the risk of scrutiny, scorn, and the disapproval of the rest of society. Lily, imprisoned in a society where the allowance of individual freedom depended on the threat of the integrity to the structure of society: How alluring the world outside the gilded cage appeared to Lily, as she heard its door clang on her. In reality, as she knew, the door never clanged: it stood always open; but most of the captives were like flies in a bottle, and having once flown in, could never regain their freedom. It was Seasons distinction that he had never forgotten the way out. (Wharton, House of Mirth) Lily's prison was self-inflicted; while society may lead to this feeling, much like depression may lead to suicide; imprisonment stems from the individual, from a reaction to the society or institution they are in.

If one had the strength and moral fiber they could find the way out; however, for many prison, secures [one] in the world, which [they] profess to have renounced, but in fact cherished to the end of [their] life. (E. W. Extra. Life, Dwight) On the issue of love and societal restrictions from that Wharton has been quoted as saying Past the alien faces of antique civilizations and the familiar wonders of Greece, till I swam upon the fiercely rushing tide of the Middle Ages, with its swirling eddies of passion, its heaven-reflecting pools of poetry and art The rhythmic blow of the craftsmen's hammers in the goldsmiths workshops and on the walls of the churches, the party cries of armed factions in the narrow streets, the organ roll of Dantes verse, the crackle of fagots around the Arnold of Brescia, the twitter of the swallows to which St. Francis preached, the laughter of the ladies listening on the hillside to the quips of the Deamerin, while the plague-struck Florence howled beneath thermal this and much more I heard, joined in such strange unison with the voices earlier and more remote, fierce, passionate, or tender, yet subdued to such awful harmony that I thought of the song that the morning stars sang together and felt of though it were sounding in my ears. My heart beat to suffocation; the tears burned my lids; the joy, the mystery of it seemed too intolerable to be borne.

I could not understand even the words of the song; but I knew that if there had been someone at my side who could have heard it with me, we might have found the key together. (E. W. ExtroLife, Dwight) Wharton, just as Lily, subject to feelings of imprisonment from their institutions and societal restraints; whom on finding the one who would have been able to unlock the words to Dante with them, and also the door to their prison could have escaped the feelings of despair which overtook them and thus, would then find themselves capable to hold onto love; however, Lily overdosed on chloral and only in death, in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear. (Wharton, House of Mirth, p. 317) 33 f

Research essay sample on House Of Mirth Chopin The Awakening