the awakening

A detailed Summary of the awakening

The novel, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin is set in the late nineteenth century, in

Louisiana. This is a place and time for women to submit themselves to the wants and

needs of husbands and families. The protagonist, Edna Pontellier, isn't content with being

a mother-woman, one of the ordinary, traditional women who, "...idolized their children,

worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it to a holy privilege to efface themselves as

individuals and grow wings as ministering angels"( Chopin 51). Edna wanted more, and

as there were very few women at this time leading the way to break these sorts of glass

ceilings, Edna looked for women within her life to model herself after.

Adele Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz, two women who also engage in art,

serve as Edna Pontellier's options, they represent what society views as the suitable and

unsuitable woman figures. Mademoiselle Ratignolle is the ideal Grand Isle woman, a

home-loving mother and a good wife, and Mademoiselle Reisz as the old, unmarried,

childless, musician who devoted her life to music, rather than a man. Feeling that neither

of their lifestyles were suitable and lacking the ability to create a model of her own, Edna

queer things sometimes in a bantering way that you don't notice at the time and you find

leading this life as she already had a family and couldn't well just rid herself of them, as

regress, she was way beyond the role Adele plays. At the same time choosing

lose her beauty, her youth, her husband, and children- everything in short but her art and

the existences of only two women similar to her. Today a person could probably find a

gifts' and a 'soul that dares and defies'"(Hollister 91). Edna is so intrigued by Reisz's

many aspects of her model that Edna does not wish to imitate. Reisz is very much disliked

loves Mademoiselle Reisz and Adele. So even though, "Reisz is the critical head, more

what Edna identifies with, there is still a very feminine, even mother-woman set of idea

Approximate Word count = 1618
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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