Edna's Role In The Awakening

“A Sorrowful Woman” examines the detrimental effects of the mother’s repressed sexuality on her small family, as well as how addiction and isolation hasten her descent into madness. The mother denies her sexuality for fear of retributions and judgements from her family and by society. Her repressed feelings have accumulated over the years and resulted in a subconscious hatred for her husband and son. Godwin communicates how little they mean to the woman by never even revealing their names.

In Excerpts from the Awakening, Kate Chopin conveys that women deserve the same freedoms as men, so when Edna sets out to find her independence, much like Orleanna, who is tired of being treated poorly by her no good husband, it creates a connection between the stories. Orleanna appears to be a good mother who keeps her kids in check, and in line, for the most part. Her children aren’t too thrilled about being stuck in the Congo on their trip, but they all have to do what their father says. Orleanna obeys her husband Nathan during the beginning of the book because she is too afraid to step out of line because she knows how Nathan gets when he

(m2MB) Anne realizes that she needs to stay calm and respect her mother, but she has great difficulty in doing so. Anne acknowledges that she and her mother do not have the expected mother-daughter relationship. In some cases, mothers and daughters do not have the ideal, loving relationship. Instead, they may dislike each other and fight.

Curley’s wife tries to explain to Candy that his dreams will never work out which portrays that she deals with her attention by bring people down. In one of the final scenes, Curley’s wife tells Lennie to feel her hair after she finds out that Lennie likes soft things. Then, Lennie grabs onto her hair and will not let go. After struggling for many seconds, “she was still, for Lennie had broken her neck” (Steinbeck pg 91). Curley’s wife’s continual urgency for attention ends up getting her killed.

Similarly to Edna’s character in The Awakening, Nora (the female lead), undergoes a rebellion against the patriarchy as well. Like Edna, Nora was conditioned to live a life characterized by focusing on others, rather than herself. She was to obey her husband and mother her children. Throughout the play, Nora’s demise due to her self-neglect becomes apparent. However, rather than cheating on her husband, Nora decides to be upfront with Torvald and leave him.

Throughout the book, Moody narrates the difference between and her mother’s way of thinking which signifies their generation gap. Anne mood’s mother, Toosweet Davis (Mama) led a challenging life of inequality and suppression. Just like many African Americans of her generation, Mrs. Davis fears to protest for justice and equality. Similarly, Toosweet lacked the confidence to stand up against her husband family. After witnessing this, Moody showed the lack of respect for her mother’s actions of belittling herself.

This passage is where Edna’s “awakening” begins in the text as she starts to go against the role of an obedient housewife. She realizes that she does not want to be a meek woman who obeys her husband without question and in light of this change, she starts to cry. Chopin uses similes to capture how empty Edna feels inside due to how her husband treats her. She feels trapped not only by her husband, but by society as Chopin shows that it is her “Fate.” Chopin's attention to water in the background of this scene is meant to be a symbol which shows how Edna strives to be a free like the ocean instead of being hidden by

She is tasked with the unfair role of caring for her family and looking for her dad. She could have given up, but her unconscious fear and lack of trust of men, left her to juggle both. Just like Ree, the rest of the women in the community take up this responsibility of a caretaker through their lack of trust in the men of the society. It is in this regard that Ree is forced to try and fix the molding of her brothers who seem to be destined to follow in the same footsteps of the men in their family, undependable and lacking a sense of responsibility. She identifies the unequivocal resemblance between Sonny and Blond Milton in that they have a “punishing spirit” (Woodrell 8).

The narrator thinks otherwise because of the fact that she wants to do something that is in her best interest. For instance, the narrator’s experiences as a child were difficult to deal with because of the suffering that the mother gave to her. The mother had authority over the narrator and forced her to involve in things that she did not want to do. An indication of the story is, “Only two kinds of daughters. Those who obedient and those who follow their own mind!

Joy’s mother, Mrs. Hopewell, states that it is hard to think of her daughter as an adult, and that Joy’s prosthetic leg has kept her from experiencing “any normal good times” that people her age have experienced (O’Connor 3). Despite the fact that Joy has no experience with people outside of her home, Joy has contempt and spite around her mother and acquaintances alike. In fact, when Joy changed her name to Hulga, she considered it “her highest creative act” and found a self-serving pleasure when the name brought dissatisfaction to her mother (O’Connor 3). When Joy expresses her disgust with her hometown, she also shares that she would much rather be “lecturing to people who knew what she was talking about” (O’Connor 4). Therefore, Joy suggests that the people and ideas that have surrounded her are inferior to her intelligence, and this

Edna constantly struggles to realize her true desires and to understand her inner emotions and personal preferences. Part of her is always trying to establish a new outer persona while also trying to determine what she wants on the inside. She has an inner conflict between loving her family and showing compassion for them, or facing her honest yearning for a different lifestyle, breaking away from the expectations and standards of society. In the end, this internal argument causes her to fully realize that in her time period, what she truly wants is unattainable, especially after dealing with rejection from Robert and disappointment in her marriage. Overall, Mrs. Pontellier is trying to be herself in a world where a pre-existing set of rules already determine who she

For many years, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening was considered perhaps one of the most scandalous novels written by a woman about a woman’s sexual and spiritual liberation and independence. Much of Chopin’s fiction has been praised as a celebration of female sexuality, conspicuously highlighting the tension between erotic desire and the demands that come from marriage, family life, and society (Martin 1). Unlike other literary contemporaries, Chopin does not attempt to moralize her heroines’ moral frailty, and more importantly she unapologetically allows her heroines’ unconventional sexuality to thrive (Martin 6). Only recently has The Awakening been acknowledged as a well-crafted narrative of Edna Pontellier’s struggle between individuality and

It is often easy to spot an outlier. An outlier is the person or thing that acts, dresses, and is overall completely different from everything else around them. Edna Pontellier is a perfect example of an obvious outlier. Edna is an alien in her life of proper people. She is not like the others.

Imagine living in a society that restricts women from expressing themselves and acting as freely as they want. A society that places pressure on women to play the role of what women are supposed to be, which is the “mother figure or caretaker. ” Till this day society still view women at an ever low stature compared to men. Women are always restricted as to how they are allowed to express themselves as individuals.

In “Culture” by Stephen Greenblatt, it explains that culture is the “beliefs and practices that from a given culture function as a persuasive technology of control, a set of limits… to which individuals must conform.” Greenblatt’s idea of culture is explaining that in some cases in books there is cultural constraints, which is all based upon their society and how the role of men and women are expected to be and it is most times, although not all, passed from generation to generations. Some works of art go on to “ batter against the boundaries of their own culture to record the voice of the displaced and oppressed.” In The Awakening by Kate Chopin, the protagonist, Edna Pontellier doesn’t fit into Greenblatt’s definition of Culture, but the