The Awakening: Women's Role in Society

Have you ever wondered what the lifestyles of Nineteenth Century women were like? Were they independent, career women or were they typical housewives that cooked, clean, watched the children, and catered to their husbands. Did the women of this era express themselves freely or did they just do what society expected of them? Kate Chopin was a female author who wrote several stories and two novels about women. One of her renowned works of art is The Awakening. This novel created great controversy and received negative criticism from literary critics due to Chopin's portrayal of women by Edna throughout the book.

The Awakening is a novel about a woman, Edna Pontellier, who is a confused soul. She is a typical housewife that is looking to find herself and be freed from her undesirable lifestyle. Edna was married to her husband for six years and has tow little boys. Her husband, Leonce Pontellier, is the "bread-maker" in the family. He is a business man that pays all the makes and makes sure that his family is financially stable while Edna cares for the children, cooks, and keeps the house clean. The "wifely duties do not fulfill Edna.

Mrs. Pontellier spends her summer at the Grand Isle with her children as she does every summer. She meets a man by the name of Robert Lebrun and realizes that she isn't impressed with her life. When he leaves for Mexico she meets another man that is interested in her but she doesn't feel the same way. Judging by her actions, Edna's husband assumes she has some type of mental problem because he isn't impressed with how she is taking care of the house and children. (Chopin, humanties text, 28-99)

Towards the end of the novel Edna goes back to the Grand Isle to swim at the beach. This is when she finally "frees herself" and commits suicide, leaving her life and family behind. Mrs. Pontellier's character and how she ended her life is what caused the novel to receive negative criticism and caused a main controversy.

In The Awakening, Kate Chopin portrays women as being loving wives and mothers that live their life to care for their family and worship their husbands. According to literary critic, Dana Kinninson, this story indicates two types of women, which are expressed by Adele Ratigndle and Mademoiselle Reisz. Adele Ratigndle is "the ideal wife and mother who never experiences an impulse that deters her from the sole concern of caring for her family. She also embodies every womanly grace and charm." Then you have Mademoiselle Reisz, which is the complete opposite of Adele. She has devoted her time and energy to the development of her own abilities instead of a husband and home. Reisz is a pianist older woman who lives alone and is depicted as homely and disagreeable. (Kinnison, 22)

Adele and Mademoiselle's lifestyles seem to be the only two options for Edna. Kinninson believes that Edna's options are the reward of complete self-sacrifice versus the reproof of female self-assertion. No middle ground exist, just these extreme contradictions. Edna is a mother of two children but being a mother or "mother-woman" doesn't satisfy her soul and her desire for self-hood. This is all part of her "awakening" and finding herself. (Kinninson, 23-24)

James Justus, who is also a critic of American literature, questions what Edna awakens to and if in fact her awakening is at all a sign of being free. Justus doesn't clearly understand what Edna awakens to but he concluded that Mrs. Pontellier awakens out of the life convention which denies her the full expression of all that is latent within her. Edna's character plays a loving mother, dutiful wife, dependable friend, and gracious hostess. Mrs. Pontellier's desire to be a "free-woman" isn't really realized and her specific lovers (Robert Lebrun and Alcee Arobin) become as irrelevant as her friends, husband, and children.

James Justus also believes that her awakening started in childhood when Chopin indicates that "Edna lived her own small life within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life, the outward existence which conforms the inward life which questions." Edna struggles between the mother-woman and the artist-woman. Adele is a mother-woman that lives for her children and Reisz despises children. Edna does love her children but she can't express her true identity. In the Creole society, "mother-women idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels."

(Justus, 109)

Edna Pontellier was dissatisfied with the life of a mother-woman because she couldn't release her true identity. Neither friends nor lovers could help her release her identity as a free woman. The tragedy within the book that James Justus likes to point out is that despite her emotional changes Edna cannot release her identity. As a result, she commits suicide.

From a different aspect, Kenneth Eble explores and examines the tragedy of Edna's suicide. In his article, Eble starts off by first saying that the novel is about sex. Then he refers to Chopin's biographer, Daniel Rankin and argues what Rankin believes about the novel. According to Eble, Daniel Rankin called The Awakening "exotic in setting, morbid in theme, erotic in motivation." He refers to Edna as a "selfish, capricious" woman. Eble thinks otherwise. Kenneth Eble emphasized that Edna is not deluded by the ideas of romance, nor is she the sensuous but guilt-ridden woman of the novel. Eble concludes that Edna's struggle for her identity and her suicide isn't a sin punished or a result of uncertainty.