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Adele And Edna Pontellier In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

519 Words3 Pages

Within the novel, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Madame Ratignolle’s character possesses traits that emphasize, by contrast the characteristics and behavior of Edna Pontellier. Despite being close friends within the novel, Adele and Edna have contrasting views and behaviors that illuminate the theme of female freedom and the tradition of female submission and male domination.
Madame Ratignolle and Edna Pontellier are close friends, but their views toward raising children differ fundamentally. Madame Ratignolle would sacrifice her identity to devote herself entirely to her children, household, and husband, whereas Edna would not. Besides their views towards raising children, how they raise their children also differs. Madame Ratignolle cares …show more content…

However, Creole women were expected to be chaste, and would behave in a unreserved manner. The exposure to such openness is what frees Edna from her previously repressed emotions and desires and motivates her to become more independent. Because they are women, Adele and Edna do not have much freedom, as in comparison to men. However, Edna gains more freedom that is much closer to that of men when she abandons her household and social responsibilities. Edna’s refusal to follow and obey social conventions, allows her to spend her time on painting and sketching. And with Leonce and the children’s absence, Edna branches off even further buying her own house and sustaining herself with a small income from her paintings. This allows Edna to gain even more independence from her household, children, and spouse, to the point that she has gone against the female submission rule in societies conventions. On the other hand, Adele is obedient and submissive to her household, husband, and children, rarely leaving the premise of her house. Because of Adele being the “mother-woman”(p.8) and following societies conventions, she is granted very little freedom as she can’t leave her house because of the duties she is expected to complete on a day to day basis. Adele’s obedience and Edna’s defiance contraste each other, effectively highlighting the themes of female submission and female freedom within the

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She even committed suicide due to the fact of how badly she needed to free herself from the Creole lifestyle. Edna, a remarkable lady in a sense, rebelled against the norms of society to openly be herself. People like Edna, or people brave enough to take a chance to change societal norms, come rare to find, especially during the late 1800’s. Edna never agreed to anything she did not want, after the marriage to Leonce, and was quite straight-forward with her desires. Edna, ideally, is a great role model to look up to in today’s world for filling that brave, young woman role to not let society shape her, despite the few occurrences she had intimate moments with multiple men or her carelessness towards her children.

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In the beginning of the book, Edna lets her husband sort of pusher her arounds and she is not allowed to be who she is. However, one night things changed. Her husband, Leonce, was going in the house to go to bed and he calls for Edna to join him. To his confusion she says no. This may be the first time Edna stood up for herself and did something she wanted to do.

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While at the Grand Isle, Edna meets several contrasting characters who help develop her defiant thoughts eventually leading to her awakening. One of her closest friends, Madame Ratignolle, is described as the ideal mother and wife; she is attentive to her husband and cares for her children above all else. Ironically, Edna feels the opposite way; she would “give up the unessential; [she] would give [her] money, [she] would give [her] life for [her] children; but [she] wouldn’t give [her]self” (40). When she revealed this opinion to Madame Ratignolle “a rather heated argument [followed]; the two women did not appear to understand each other or to be talking the same language” (52). Edna’s attitude toward her children compared to Madame Ratignolle’s is the first of many rebellious

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Edna is becoming autonomous, and rebelled against Léonce, which is completely opposite to Adéle’s submissiveness and dependence to her family. Furthermore, Edna reached her apex, whereas Adéle is at her lowest in the entire book. This further illustrates Edna’s character development throughout the book because it shows her willingness to separate herself from something that oppresses

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The Awakening is written in the third person omniscient point-of-view in order to help readers fully understand any complications in Edna’s transformation; this point of view provides an insight into the reality of Edna’s struggle for authenticity throughout the novel. In referring to being a mother or a wife as a role, it implies that women are just playing a part, pretending to be someone else, suppressing themselves, for the happiness of their family. Also Chopin’s use of the ‘un’ prefixes “acts as a juxtaposing force, drawing the reader’s attention to the emotion or act that Edna aims at, but cannot quite authentically experience” (Beer and Goodwyn). It is a sharp reversal of any new-found self-confidence; it acts as a cruel reminder of how close Edna gets to authenticity but ultimately finds it

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Her frequent vacations to the island, like her frequent dips into the ocean, begin to spark a personal change within the woman. A Creole man, Robert, shows Edna a new dimension of feelings she never knew she lived without, and she begins to look through life through a new lens. Having been awakened for the first time, she sees injustice and mistreatment where she saw none before. Chopin uses Edna’s new observations and reactions to the culture around her to illustrate the myriad ways women were marginalized. In an ironic twist, the white woman from Kentucky proves to be more liberated than her more traditional husband, who grew up

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The social roles Edna might have chosen to live by and sustain, implicitly revealing that her sense of the practical, available social identities is erroneously and therefore tragically limited. As Bartley reminds us, Leonce must finally acknowledge and even accommodate Edna 's departure from the house. It is true that he "speaks" her story by providing an excuse for Edna to their friends and family, but Leonce 's fictional explanation for her leaving is nonetheless a sign that he is willing to renegotiate the old (and more conventional) terms of their marriage, including how much responsibility over childcare and childrearing Leonce might be willing to take on himself. Should marriage prove impossible for Edna, she might develop the friendship she has started with Adele, and/or Madame Reisz. Together all three might approach other women in similar circumstances and join a women 's rights movement.

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Edna fully understands that society would brand her as a terrible woman, but she does not view herself as a bad person. There is an external and internal difference that Edna hopes to one day reconcile. Chopin, instead of creating tension within Edna, created tension within the society and Edna with her newfound independence does not mind how society classifies her. Decisively, it can be concluded that the tension between outward conformity and inward questioning builds the meaning of the novel by examining Edna’s role as a wife, mother, and as nontraditional woman in the traditional Victorian period.

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Edna continually questions whether or not she is destined to live a life of subordination or if she can find her own freedom. Edna Pontellier’s defiant nature is brought out

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In addition, the search for self-identity is viewed as important in today’s society. Thus, these confliction attributes lead the reader to identify Edna as morally ambiguous. Categorizing complex characters as purely good or purely evil is not one of the easiest of tasks. As a result, it is best to characterize them as morally ambiguous. In Edna’s case, she is morally ambiguous due to her romantic affiliations and role-defying actions, but both are immensely vital to Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” as a complete whole.

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There is a perceived split between “outer Edna and inner Edna” that is constantly disrupting Edna and her desires. Outer Edna is supposed to be recognized as this ideal wife who obeys her husband and does what he commands-similar to her friend Adele. This lifestyle that Edna is supposed to live by cannot be achieved due to “inner Edna’s” desire of being free and independent. “Outer Edna” conforms to society expectations even if it is not what she desires, while “inner Edna” seeks independence and

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1386 Words | 6 Pages

Moreover, when her children tumbled, she will not pick them up just let them get up on their own. In contrast to Adele, Edna is not contributing herself to her family as well as Adele. Edna tries to fit in as the role to be a good mother, but, she cannot definitely, to be a mother-woman cannot fulfill her eagerness to be a special, independent and egocentric person. In Chapter XVI, Edna said to Adele, she would give her money and her life to children, but never herself. And that is what she is trying to understand and recognize.

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In The Awakening, Edna represents desire, impulse, and rebellion. While Adele represents the socially accepted woman, she is submissive, obedient, and a homemaker. This drastic contrast facilitates Chopin's emphasis on Edna’s rebellion, and how drastic it was for the time period. “Edna's experience of self-discovery, "tangled" and chaotic and therefore "vague" or hard for her to comprehend, touches upon a core issue, of individual variation and the uncertainty involved in its creation, expression, and consequences.” (Glendening).

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This socially constructed identity is the first of the many that Edna grapples with in the text. It is the identity of women within the time period of the text. In the words of Dix, Edna’s identity is meant to be that of a typical American wife who will control the home, children and entertain socially yet remain obedient to her working husband (146). ‘Looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property’ (Chopin 4). The

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