“Awakening” (in Chopin C. “Awakening and Other Stories” Random House, New York, NY: 2000) engages questions of feminism that Edna Pontellier, the center of American/New Orleans Creole history, ponders often and with great interest. puzzled about his role. a mother of two who is married to a well-to-do brokerage husband (Leonce Pontellier) who travels often (for business or pleasure). The book generated much controversy for many decades after it was written in 1899, but it eventually became and has endured as Kate Chopin’s most famous work.

The community sees Leonce as the epitome of the ideal husband, as Leonce dotes on and provides so much for his wife and children, he is constantly concerned about the well-being and happiness of his household. However, Edna does not see Leonce as her choice of husband, she says that her marriage was accidental, that as she grew up there were particular men around her and that she wished she could hold her hand. Leonce is disciplined, pushy and discreet, often dissatisfied with Edna’s attention to children and other domestic matters, even more so because he is often away on business and Edna has a lot of help, Leonce sometimes makes Edna leave and cry.

Perhaps Edna was the forerunner of the modern American woman…one who is predominantly independent (or at least longs to be), one who has more power to make decisions about what she prefers, one whose identity is not efficiently defined by the wealth. , appearance, family, husband or children. In her state of psychological disillusion (“An indescribable oppression, which seemed to be generated in some unknown part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with vague anguish” [179]), Edna’s love for the two children she gave birth to is unusually distant, the mother’s instinct seems weak, the children are more fond of their father. “If one of Pontellier’s little children fell while she was playing, she was not likely to run crying into her mother’s arms for comfort…Mrs. Pontellier was not a woman-mother…” (181).

The author Chopin, therefore, paints a picture of a soul plagued by a mix of feminist and psychological issues. It must be remembered that even in this age of feminist liberation, men who love and care for their wives and children are still highly regarded and in high demand. Chopin implicitly shows that female emancipation and longing can take many forms. Additionally, Chopin often compares and contrasts the main characters in terms of their beauty and body textures/shapes, illustrating that this theme has been strong in the United States for centuries.

“[Edna] he was more handsome than beautiful… face… captivating by a certain directness of expression and a subtle contradictory play of features” (174). Chopin writes of Edna’s companion and friend, Adele Rattignolle (somewhat in contrast to Edna) that, “… all her beauty was there, flaming and apparent… two pouting lips… the grace of each step, pose, gesture… (182). Many writers have pointed out that Kate Chopin was not a suffragist and did not join any feminist movement; and, in fact, many feminist writers play down the aesthetic characteristics and comparisons of women, aspects that can recall the vagueness of Hollywood.

Eventually, Edna wants to leave her family’s big house and settle down “…in a four-bedroom house on the corner” (294). A woman who had great difficulty learning to swim, one who is still in her second year at it, Edna will finally find unsettling comfort in walking introspectively alone into the sea, stripping off all her clothes, reflecting on her life and swimming and allowing herself to swim. herself to be swallowed by the sea, a fatal blow to the self-mastery and psychological emancipation she sought. Edna was born a reserved child, she was miserable and suffocated, her marriage and sketches did not reach the standards she wanted, there was something missing in her “ideal and loving family; its comfort and big house”, the lustful relationship with the The boy Robert, the conspicuous and womanizing son of Madame Lebrun, the mistress of the estate, was full of holes and would not last. Edna did not fit into the conventional mode of the American dream woman of the early twentieth century. Instead, she provides a window into what woman, over the many decades to come, might evolve as the individualistic and emancipated woman.

In “Awakening”, Edna Pontellier is supposed to be one of the luckiest women in the world. She has a present husband, faithful, hard-working and wealthy, capable and loving, who fathered her two sons with hers, she does not have to leave home to work. However, she is dissatisfied with her status quo, a rich, homey situation that many women yearn to be in. The narrator is telling us that women are complex people, each with an individual personality, one size does not fit all; the needs and interests, and the ambitions of each woman vary. Edna is terribly distant from the two children she gave birth to. “If one of Pontellier’s little children fell while she was playing, she was not likely to run crying into her mother’s arms for comfort…Mrs. Pontellier was not a woman-mother…” (181). But in fact, women (and females) have been known to neglect and even kill their children, for reasons ranging from psychological to aversion to caring for offspring. Women have been known to chase and drown their children in bathtubs (Andrea Pia Yates, in 2002, drowned all five of her children in a bathtub; she had a history of postpartum depression and psychosis), or let a car full of her children roll into a river and drown them (Susan Smith, in 1994 did this to her two children).

Edna Pontellier had two children, in the end she drowns. Women have been known to leave their enviable husbands and children in a comfortable life and fall in love with blue-chip criminals who are locked up in prison. Edna mentions that she wants to leave her comfortable home and her enviable family, and live in a smaller dwelling down the street “…in a four-bedroom house on the corner” (294). Postpartum depression has been mentioned about women, and in Edna’s case she seems to have become vague. Many women, even in contemporary times, yearn for biological or at least adoptive motherhood. Still, there are those who believe that her biologically conceived children are one of the most unfair ways in which a woman is exploited as the caretaker of a baby during gestation. Human gestation is a difficult experience, compared to that of most other species (consider squirrels and rabbits). Human fetuses comparatively have many defects, miscarriages are common. At the same time, the man does not have the burden of taking the child to work and keeping a sleeping eye on the child. The child’s parents sometimes move away, abandoning their offspring.

Edna portrays that a woman can want much more than a family of children and a husband, perhaps she was a lesbian who had not been discovered as such. She at least she was unhappy with her husband Leonce, who is conventional, disciplined and inflexible. This discontent is understandable…it happens. But why the distance of offspring from her, and then the lustful interest in young Robert, eventually adultery? Edna will always be an enigma! Perhaps Edna suffered from multiple personality disorder, something psychological was bothering her. Perhaps she longed to be the free and independent woman, free to love or have sex with whomever she chose, the forerunner of the independent and whole woman of the 20th and 21st centuries, free to express her sexuality and stick to her preferences. . Edna, often subtly, questions feminism in the context of individuality, sexuality, marriage, freedom and choice, reproduction and child rearing, spousal attachment and power, and the context and the role of marriage in a woman’s life. . Edna stresses that every woman has a unique individuality, personal talent and tastes that beg to be fully discovered, so she doesn’t need to be comfortable with how society compartmentalizes women, even more so as wives, mothers, housekeepers. home and treasured items. beauty and property.