Awake

A detailed Summary of Awake

Compare The Awakening to Madame Bovary

Kate Chopin's The Awakening and Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary are both tales of women indignant with their domestic situations; the distinct differences between the two books can be found in the authors' unique tones. Both authors weave similar themes into their writings such as, the escape from the monotony of domestic life, dissatisfaction with marital expectations and suicide. References to "fate" abound throughout both works. In The Awakening, Chopin uses fate to represent the expectations of Edna Pontellier's aristocratic society. Flaubert uses "fate" to portray his characters' compulsive methods of dealing with their guilt and rejecting of personal accountability. Both authors, however seem to believe that it is fate that oppresses these women; their creators view them subjectively, as if they were products of their respective environments.

Chopin portrays Edna as an object, and she receives only the same respect as a possession. Edna's husband sees her as and looks, "...at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage." (P 2 : The Awakening) Chopin foils their marriage in that of the Ratignolles who, "...un

Simultaneously, Mademoiselle Reisz, who "...sent a keen tremor down Mrs. Pontellier's spinal column..." which perhaps is the tremor that marks the beginning of Edna's self discovery. "A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her, - the light which, showing the way, forbids it." (P 13 : The Awakening) As she explores her world, other men, swimming, and her other romantic pursuits, she experiences her epiphany; she finds that the world has much to offer and kills herself in the lamentation of that which she cannot truly have.

The Awakening and Madame Bovary both have nearly identical subject matter; distinct from one another only by the authors' tones. Two passive women are subjected to situations where they feel oppressed and constrained. They have extramarital affairs and explore their worlds. At the ends, they die at their own hands. Chopin sees her protagonist in the light of sympathy, using literature as a device portraying her characters in a sympathetic light. Flaubert, using nearly the same characters, produced a 300-page soap opera, having once described literature as Athe dissection of a beautiful woman with her guts in her face, her leg skinned, and half a burned-out cigar lying on her foot" (http://mchip00.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit...docs/webdescrips/flaubert191-des-.html); his tone is apparent in his commentary. The two stories are actually quite identical, as if two different narrators had told the same tale.

Flaubert compares Emma with a martyr as, "...she looked at the pious vignettes edged in azure in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the Sacred heart pierced with sharp arrows, and poor Jesus stumbling as He walked under His cross... She attempted to think of some vow to fulfill." Emma indeed carries her own cross, but she does not stand for anything but her own greed; "...she

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Approximate Word count = 1234
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English