Pontellier was not a mother-woman. Edna tries on one occasion to explain to Adele how she feels about her children and how she feels about herself, which greatly differs from the mother-woman image. Although Edna loves her children she does not confuse her own life with theirs.
The Grand Isle society defines the role of the wife as full devotion towards their husband and self-sacrifice for her husband. Pontellier was the best husband in the world. That she married him not because there are none better, but because there are also none worse.
By moving to her own residence, Edna takes a colossal step towards autonomy, a direct violation of the mother-woman image. Throughout The Awakening, Edna increasingly distances herself from the image of the mother-woman, until her suicide, which serves as the total opposite of the mother-woman image. Adele Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz, the two important female subsidiary characters, provide the two different identities Edna associates with. For Edna, Adele appears unable to perceive herself as an individual human being.
She possesses no sense of herself beyond her role as wife and mother, and therefore Adele exists only in relation to her family, not in relation to herself or the world. Edna desires individuality, and the identity of a mother-woman does not provide that.
Like the parrot, Edna is valued by society for her physical appearance. And like the mockingbird, Mademoiselle Reisz is valued by society for her musical talent.
Although the parrot and the mockingbird are different, the two birds can communicate since they share, like Edna and Mademoiselle Reisz, the common experience of confinement.
The metaphor of the pet bird applies not only to Edna and Mademoiselle Reisz but also to most women in the nineteenth century. Never asked to voice their own opinions, these women were instead expected to repeat the ideas that society voiced to them through the bars of their metaphorical cages.
Her tearful escape onto the porch prefigures later episodes in which she will similarly defy others by isolating herself from them. The lady in black, who paces with her rosary beads, demonstrates a different sort of isolation—the patient, resigned solitude of a widow. Throughout the novel, this black-clad woman never speaks, as if having vowed silence. Her silence contributes to her lack of individuality and her idealization within the text as the socially acceptable widow.
She devotes herself solely to her husband and children, seeking nothing for herself. Edna can hardly believe the permissiveness of Creole society in allowing everyone, including women, to discuss openly the intimacies of life such as pregnancy, undergarments, and love affairs.
Men like Robert can ostentatiously play at flirting with married women, and the women can freely reciprocate. Despite this outward appearance of liberty, however, Creole society imposes a strict code of chastity. Indeed, it is only because the rules for behavior are so rigid that a certain freedom of expression is tolerated. Courtly love was a cultural ideal based on medieval love poetry, in which a relationship developed between a woman and a man who devoted all his actions toward her as an ideal figure.
The relationship between the two lovers, however, was entirely chaste. During the middle ages, courtly love provided a woman with an opportunity—other than marriage—to express affection without losing her social respectability.
They have become wives and mothers, instead of potentially single, and independent women, and their boxed-in world suffocates them. She strayed from her responsibilities as a mother and wife, and embraced her intense desire for self fulfillment which she never got in her relationships. Edna in the end committed suicide to escape from the oppressions of the Victorian society she was living in. Works Cited Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Choosing between Family and Individuality in Kate Chopin's The Awakening Kate Chopin's The Awakening focuses on a woman's struggle to become an individual while still being a mother and wife.
In the process of this journey, the female heroine discovers that establishing her own identity means losing a mother's identity.
Edna looks to be the "brave soul," a "soul that dares and defies" Chopin Edna's society looked down upon females who seek anything other than attending to their children and husband's needs. Therefore, she is seen as an outcast and must turn inward as well as outward towards nature for satisfaction and approval. She surprised patriarchal society by ignoring her role to play as a wife and mother. The idea of motherhood is very dominant theme of this book.
In The Awakening, Kate Chopin explores the inner life of a woman, lost in the patriarchal world and without anyone who truly understands her. Because of the roles that society has given them, women are not able to seek and fulfill their own psychological and sexual drives.
In The Awakening, Chopin uses Edna Pontellier to show that women do not want to be restricted by the roles that society has placed on them. Because of the time she lived in, Edna felt oppressed just because she was a woman. Being a married woman and a mother made her feel even more tied down.
By looking at the relationship between Edna and her husband, Leonce, we see that men treated women as if they were nothing more than possessions or property.
Edna later realizes that she cannot be the same as Mademoiselle Reisz. Edna does not possess the carefree attitude of Reisz and stills struggles with social appro With her death she is surrendering herself to freedom.
Her death by sea is a symbol of her allowing herself to overcome her ambiguity about her personhood. Dyer, Joyce. The Awakening: A Novel of Beginnings. New York: Twayne Publishers,
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