The Awakening (novel)From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Awakening is a short novel by Kate Chopin, first published in 1899. It is widely considered to be a proto-feminist precursor to American modernism.

[edit] Plot summary

Edna Pontellier, the bologna wife of a successful New Orleans businessman and the mother of two, vacations with her family at a seaside resort in Grand Isle, Louisiana. She spends much of her time with Robert Lebrun, a romantic young man who has decided to attach himself to Edna for the summer. After many intimate conversations, boating excursions, and moonlit walks, they both realize that they are developing romantic feelings for each other. Edna then realizes that there is much within herself that has remained dormant throughout her adult life.

When vacation ends and the Pontelliers return to New Orleans, Edna frees herself from the trappings of her old life, including her social position, her role as a mother, and her role as a wife. A major part of this freeing in Edna's life is accomplished through her affair with Alcée Arobin. Moving out of her husband's house, she establishes herself in a cottage and hopes that Robert Lebrun will return soon from an extended business trip in Mexico.

Upon Robert's return, Edna discovers that he is unable to come to grips with her newfound freedom. Indeed, she seems hopelessly bound by the traditional values of the French Creole community.

Edna thereupon returns to the seaside resort in the off-season. She makes arrangements for her lunch before heading off to the beach, and carries along a towel for drying off. Unable to resist the lure of the water, she strips nude and swims out as far as she can and, having exhausted herself, it seems, drowns. Most readers interpret this final passage as suicide - the final shedding of constraints foisted upon her by society.

[edit] Primary characters

[edit] Edna Pontellier

Edna Pontellier is the 28-year old (she turns 29 later in the novel) wife of Léonce Pontellier, a successful New Orleans businessman. She is rich, "handsome", and the only character in the novel to undergo a significant change in perception. When she gives up trying to be a "model wife" in the New Orleans Creole community, her character develops, liberating her inner emotions and artistic ambitions.

Other characters in the novel tend to consider Edna to be flawed as a wife, mother and woman. Edna, on the other hand, does not feel that she should conform to these standards, thus creating the pivotal tension in the story. As she externalizes her struggle, she becomes not only resistant but also somewhat resentful toward the expectations of the society and toward her husband. When she informed her husband of her move into a house that she feels more ownership of, "her letter was brilliant and brimming with happiness."

[edit] Léonce Pontellier

Léonce Pontellier is a rather stuffy, prudishly traditional 40-year-old male member of the New Orleans Creole community. As a highly successful businessman, he expects his wife, Edna, to fulfill the role of wife, mother, and socialite. Indeed, he views Edna as a part of his personal property.

He is seen as the traditionalist's ideal husband, never beating or intentionally upsetting his wife. Although he does love Edna, he feels he must counter her bid for freedom in order to preserve his reputation. Léonce is not particularly restricting on Edna, and on advice from Doctor Mandelet he allows her to stay behind while he goes on an extended business trip, hoping that time will cure her of her newfound desire for independence.

[edit] Robert Lebrun

Robert Lebrun is a young, flirtatious Creole. He is known to be in the company of at least one woman all summer at his family's resort. He and Edna have an all-consuming love for one another, but he is unable to express these true feelings because she is a married woman. He leaves for Mexico to Edna's dismay, but eventually returns. After Edna's prodding, he does reveal his feelings, but when Edna has to leave to help a friend, he is not there when she returns. A note states that he left because he loved her and did not want to enter into an affair that would harm them both.

[edit] Alcée Arobin

Alcée Arobin pursues Edna Pontellier in a casual relationship that stimulates Edna's awareness of her own sexuality. He is fundamentally shallow and self-centered. He wants her in lust without any thought to her marriage or family but later starts to develop more intense feelings for her. There is no doubt that Edna is in control of their relationship.

[edit] Adèle (Madame) Ratignolle

Adèle Ratignolle, a close friend of Edna Pontellier, is Edna's foil as a mother and wife. She adores her husband and worships her children. Adèle lives to serve her husband and children, and needs not dream of anything else. Her attempts to counsel Edna ultimately fail. Unwittingly, she also plays a big part in Edna's self-awakening. Adèle is a literary example of the Victorian Angel in the House. She often wears white and feminine clothing to emphasize her role.

[edit] Mademoiselle Reisz

Mademoiselle Reisz is an unmarried, independent, elderly lady who is described as rude and ugly by other characters. Her music and independent spirit captivate Edna, and the two become close friends. Mademoiselle Reisz brings out the subconscious feelings of Edna, from her love of Robert to her independent spirit. Edna's view of not only life but love dramatically changes and as a reader this fundamental shift is obvious.

[edit] Themes

Women as property. The Awakening is set in a time period and culture which regards women as the property of their spouses. This is exemplified at every turn, from Léonce Pontellier's straightforward comments, to the discussion of the topic by the narrator.

Hopelessness and the power to act. As property, the protagonist is left powerless, feeding a sense of despondency and hopelessness. This state of being is eventually nullified by a desperate act of defiance. Death nullifies the physical body's emotional states.

The call of art. Superficially, art entertains, exposes one to beauty, and provides escape. Experienced more deeply, however, art calls the individual to migrate into its realm; it is "the call of the wild." Edna's evolving response to Mademoiselle Reisz's music as her own emotional awakening illustrates this along with her developing desire to become an artist in her own mind.

Isolation versus solitude. In The Awakening, society uses isolation as punishment for non-conformity, but the isolated individual can nullify isolation by embracing solitude. Isolation is externally imposed; solitude is internally embraced.

The demands of society versus the needs of individuals. Society, in order to cohere, must impose certain expectations upon its members who are motivated to comply through economic and social rewards. Some individuals may find fulfillment in meeting society's expectations (e.g., Adele Ratignolle), but some, like Edna Pontellier, cannot. Society often sees this as rebellion, failure, and a general character flaw, as well as a threat to its own survival, and so refuses to accommodate such behavior.

The purity of sexual and artistic desire. In Edna, independent sexual and artistic desire become the highest good. Traditional values, especially those imposed upon women, are swept aside.

The need to be taken seriously. Léonce Pontellier dismisses Edna's aspirations as frivolous and is confident of his own power to force her to conform. To Edna, this is painful, frustrating, and unacceptable. Her need to be taken seriously transcends her obligations to those who will not take her seriously. Robert Lebrun, while

initially seeming to not take Edna seriously which also disappoints her, ultimately shows himself to take her very seriously, although in a way Edna believes he misunderstands.

Escape from control. For Edna, escape from control by others transcends the value of safety.

Motherhood versus self-determination. Edna is concerned about the way she wants to be determined by herself and the moral standards in which a mother is expected by society to care for her family. It is a psychological tension in her "moral conscience."

Birds and wildlife. Throughout the book, birds are placed in various scenes, representing the freedom women are denied. At the end of the novel there is a bird with a crippled wing, but free from a cage, unlike the other birds throughout the story. This is symbolic of Edna's fragility following her newly found independent status.

Sleep and rest. Along with the obvious reference contained in the title The Awakening, the protagonist is portrayed as sleeping or just coming out of a nap. This allusion points to a modern Sleeping Beauty in which Pontellier awakens from her life of dullness, triggered by Robert Lebrun's attraction to her.

[edit] Critical reception

Immediately after its publication, reviewers frequently denounced the "unwholesome" content of this book, while simultaneously acknowledging that the writing style was outstanding. It was also condemned due to its sexual openness. The harsh reaction to the book probably was the determining factor in the publisher's decision to stop publication after only a single printing.

After its "rediscovery" in 1969, the book has been often praised for its treatment of women's issues, and for its magnificent[citation needed] lyrical style.

Feminist re-readings of the novel have criticized its treatment of race and class. Edna fails to relate her own social confinement to the subordinate status of the faceless black servants in the novel.

Many critics claim that the constant chapter breaks take away from the book and cause the scenes to be forgettable.[citation needed]

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Kate ChopinFrom Wikiquote

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Kate Chopin (1851-02-08 – 1904-08-22) was an American author of short stories and novels.

[edit] Sourced

[edit] The Awakening (1899)

Looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of property which has suffered some damage.

An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her concsiousness, filled her with a vague anguish...like a shadow... a mist passing across her soul's summer day.

The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.

Sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again; idly, aimlessly, unthinking, and unguided.

As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself.

She could only realize that she herself — her present self — was in some way different from the other self. That she was seeing with different eyes.

Edna wondered if they had all gone mad, to be talking and clamoring at that rate. She herself could think of nothing to say about Mexico or the Mexicans.

The present alone was significant; was hers, to torture her as it was doing then with the biting conviction that she had lost that which she had held, that she had been denied that which her impassioned, newly awakened being demanded.

She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle — a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium.

"She says a wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth."

"Do you suppose a woman knows why she loves? Does she select? Does she say to herself, 'Go to! here is a distinguished statesman with presidential possibilities; I shall proceed to fall in love with him.' or, 'I shall set my heart upon this musician, whose fame is on every tongue?' or 'this financier, who controls the world's money markets?'"

"The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejiduce must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth."

She had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.

There was something in her attitude, in her whole appearence when she leaned her head against the high-backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone.

"I've been seeing the waves and the white beach of Grand Isle; the quiet, grassy street of the Chênière Caminada; the old sunny fort at Grand Terre. I've been working with a little more comprehension than a machine, and still feeling like a lost soul."

All sense of reality had gone out of her life; she had abandoned herself to fate, and awaited the consequences with indeference.

There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor was there hope when she awoke in the morning.

"You have been a very foolish boy, waisting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontelliere's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, 'here Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,' I should laugh at you both"

"And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost."

"The years that are gone seem like dreams -if one might go on sleeping and dreaming- but to wake up and find -oh! well! perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all ones life."

She looked into the distance, and the old terror flameed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air.

[edit] External links

Wikipedia has an article about: Kate ChopinRetrieved from "http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kate_Chopin"Categories: Authors | Americans | 1900s deaths

This page was last modified on 5 September 2008, at 00:45. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

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Kate ChopinFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin in 1894

BornFebruary 8, 1850St. Louis, Missouri, United States

DiedAugust 22, 1904 (aged 54)St. Louis, Missouri, United States

Occupation Novelist, short story writerGenres realistic fiction

Notable work(s) The Awakening

Kate Chopin (born Katherine O'Flaherty on February 8, 1851 – August 22, 1904) was an American author of short stories and novels, mostly of a Louisiana Creole background. She is now considered by some to have been a forerunner of feminist authors of the 20th century.

From 1869 to 1902, she wrote short stories for both children and adults which were published in such magazines as Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, the Century, and Harper's Youth's Companion. Her major works were two short story collections, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897). Her important short stories included "Desiree's Baby", a tale of miscegenation in antebellum Louisiana; "The Story of an Hour" and "The Storm."

Chopin also wrote two novels: At Fault (1890) and The Awakening (1899), which is set in New Orleans and Grand Isle. The people in her stories are usually inhabitants of Louisiana. Many of her works are set about Natchitoches in north central Louisiana.

[edit] Childhood

Chopin was born Kate O'Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father, Thomas O'Flaherty, was a successful businessman who had immigrated from Galway, Ireland. Her mother, Eliza Faris, was a well-connected member of the French community in St. Louis. Her maternal grandmother, Athena'ise Charleville, was of French Canadian descent. Some of her ancestors were among the first European inhabitants of Dauphin Island, Alabama.[1]

After her father's death, Chopin developed a close relationship with both her mother and her great-grandmother. She also became an avid reader of fairy tales, poetry, and religious allegories, as well as classic and contemporary novels. Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens were among her favorite authors.

In 1865, she returned to Sacred Heart Academy, and began keeping a commonplace book. She graduated from Sacred Heart Academy in 1868, but did not achieve any particular distinction — except as a master storyteller.

[edit] Difficult years

In 1870, at the age of 19, she married Oscar Chopin and settled in New Orleans. Oscar Chopin was born into a well-to do cotton-growing family in Louisiana. Chopin had had all her children by the age of 28, which consisted of five boys and one girl.(Jean, Oscar Charles, George, Fredrick, Felix, and Lelia) Shortly after that, the family had to relocate to Oscar Chopin's old home in a small Louisiana parish due to his poor business decisions. In 1879 Oscar Chopin's cotton brokerage failed, and the family moved to Cloutierville, Louisiana, south of Natchitoches, to manage several small plantations and a general store. They became active in the community, and Chopin absorbed much material for her future writing, especially regarding the Creole culture of the area. Their home at 243 Highway 495 (built by Alexis Cloutier in the early part of the century) is now a national historic landmark and the home of the Bayou Folk Museum.

When Oscar Chopin died in 1882 of swamp fever (like her half-brother two decades earlier), he left Kate with $12,000 in debt (approximately $229,360 in 2005 dollars).[2] She attempted to manage the plantation and store alone but with little success. According to Emily Toth, "[f]or awhile the widow Kate ran his [Oscar's] business and flirted outrageously with local men".[3] She engaged in a relationship with a married farmer.

Although Chopin gave an honest effort to keep her late husband's plantation and general store alive, two years later she sold her Louisiana life away. Her mother implored her to move back to St. Louis, and Chopin and the children gradually settled into life in St. Louis, where finances were no longer a concern. The following year, Chopin's mother died.

As to be expected, Chopin found herself in a state of depression after the loss of both her husband and mother. Her obstetrician and family friend, Dr. Frederick Kolbenheyer, felt

that writing would be a sort of therapeutic healing process for Kate during her hard times because he said, "He understood that writing could be a focus for her extraordinary energy, as well as a source of income".[4] She was quite successful and found many of her publications inside literary magazines. Some of her writings, though, such as The Awakening (1899), were far too ahead of their times and therefore not socially embraced. Shattered by the lack of acceptance, Chopin seemed to be virtually nonexistent after almost 12 years in the public eye of the literary world. Kate Chopin then died in 1904 from a cerebral hemorrhage.

[edit] The writing years

By the late 1890s, Chopin was writing short stories, articles, and translations which appeared in periodicals, including The Saint Louis Dispatch. She became known as a regional local color writer, but her literary qualities were overlooked.

In 1899, her second novel, The Awakening, was published, and was criticized based on moral as well as literary standards. Her best-known work, it is the story of a dissatisfied wife. Out of print for several decades, it is now widely available and critically acclaimed for its writing quality and importance as an early feminist work.

Chopin, deeply discouraged by the criticism, turned to short story writing. In 1900 she wrote The Gentleman from New Orleans, and that same year was listed in the first edition of Marquis Who's Who. However, she never made much money from her writing and depended on investments in both Louisiana and St. Louis to sustain her.

While visiting the St. Louis World's Fair on August 20, 1904 Chopin was felled by a brain hemorrhage and died two days later, at the age of fifty-four. She was interred in the Calvary cemetery in St. Louis.

Chopin has been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

[edit] Literary themes

Kate Chopin experienced differentiated lifestyles throughout her time, which lent to her wide realm of societal understanding and analysis. Her childhood consisted of an upbringing by women with ancestry descending from both Irish and French family. Chopin also found herself within the Cajun and Creole part of the nation after she joined her husband in Louisiana. As a result, many of her stories and sketches were about her life in Louisiana in addition to the incorporation of her less than typical portrayals of women as their own individuals with wants and needs. Kate's seemingly unique writing style did in fact emerge from an admiration of Guy de Maupassant, who was a French short story writer.

“ ...I read his stories and marveled at them. Here was life, not fiction; for where were the plots, the old fashioned mechanism and stage trapping that in a vague, unthinkable way I had fancied were essential to the art of story making. Here was a man who had escaped from tradition and authority, who had entered into himself and looked out upon life through his own being an with his own eyes; and who, in a direct and simple way, told us what he saw... ”

[5] Kate Chopin went beyond Maupassant's technique and style and gave her writing a flavor of its own. She had an ability to perceive life and put it down on paper creatively. She put much concentration and emphasis on women's lives and their continual struggles to create an identity of their own within the boundaries of the male-ruled patriarchy. In The Story of an Hour, Mrs. Mallard allows herself time to reflect upon learning of her husband's death. Instead of dreading the lonely years ahead of her, she stumbles upon another realization all together. "She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome"[6]

Not many writers during the mid to late 19th century were bold enough to address subjects that Kate willingly took on. Although David Chopin, Kate's grandson, claims "Kate was neither a feminist nor a suffragist, she said so. She was nonetheless a woman who took women extremely seriously. She never doubted women's ability to be strong".[7]

Despite this fact, there is no question regarding where Kate's sympathies lay. It lay with the individual in the context of his and her personal life and society.

Through her stories, Kate wrote her own autobiography and documented her surroundings; Kate lived in a time when her surroundings included the abolitionist movements and the emergence of feminism. Her ideas and descriptions were not true word for word, yet there was an element of nonfiction lingering throughout each story. Kate took strong interest in her surroundings and put many of her observations to words. Jane Le Marquand saw Chopin's writings as a new feminist voice, while other intellectuals recognize it as the voice of an individual who happens to be a woman. Marquand writes, "Chopin undermines patriarchy by endowing the Other, the woman, with an individual identity and a sense of self, a sense of self to which the letters she leaves behind give voice. The 'official' version of her life, that constructed by the men around her, is challenged and overthrown by the woman of the story"[8] Kate may have been utilizing her creative writing skills to relay a nonfiction point of view regarding her belief in the strength of women. The idea of creative nonfiction might be seen as relevant in this case. In order for a story to be autobiographical, or even biographical, Marquand goes on to write, there has to be a nonfictional element, which more often than not exaggerates the truth to spark and hold interest for the readers. There are valuable points of view outside the feminsist monopoly of criticism on women's writers but these voices do not have force in this time of political correctness. Kate Chopin may have felt just as surprised by the stamp on her work as feministic as she had been in her own time by the

stamp of immorality. It is difficult in any time in history for critics to regard writers as individuals with personal points of view with no special message to a particular faction in society.

Desiree's Baby focuses in on Kate's experience with the Creoles of Louisiana. The idea of slavery and the atmosphere of plantation life was a reality in Louisiana. The possibility of one having a mixed background was not unheard of. Mulattos, as those with both black and white backgrounds, were a common race in the Southern part of the nation. The issue of racism that the story brings up was a reality in 19th century America. The dark reality of racism shows its ugly head in this story because Chopin was not afraid to address such issues that were often suppressed and intentionally ignored in order to avoid reality, as Armand does when he refuses to believe that he is of black descent. The definition of great fiction is that which has the only true subject of "human existence in its subtle, complex, true meaning, stripped of the view with which ethical and conventional standards have draped it". [9]

[edit] Works

[edit] Story collections

Bayou Folk, (Houghton Mifflin, 1894) A Night In Acadie, (Way and Williams,1897)

[edit] Novels

At Fault, (Nixon Jones Printing Co, [St. Louis], 1890) The Awakening , (H.S. Stone, 1899)

[edit] Collected edition

Sandra M. Gilbert, ed., Kate Chopin: Complete Novels and Stories (At Fault, Bayou Folk, A Night in Acadie, The Awakening, Uncollected Stories), (Library of America, 2002) ISBN 978-1-931082-21-1.

[edit] Notes

1. ̂ RootsWeb's WorldConnect Project: Phillips-Gatens and related families at worldconnect.rootsweb.com

2. ̂ The Inflation Calculator at www.westegg.com 3. ̂ Toth, Emily. "Reviews the essay' The Shadows of the First Biographer: The Case of

Kate Chopin.' Southern Review 26 (1990). 4. ̂ Seyersted, Per. Kate chopin: A Critical Biography.. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State

UP, 1985. 5. ̂ Le Marquand, Jane. "Kate Chopin as Feminist: Subverting the French Androcentric

Influence". Deep South 2 (1996) 6. ̂ The Story of an Hour, Chopin

7. ̂ Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening. "Interview: David Chopin, Kate's Grandson". <http://www.pbs.org/katechopin/interviews.html> 14 March 2008/

8. ̂ Le Marquand, Jane. "Kate Chopin as Feminist: Suberting the Fench Androcentric Influence". Deep South 2 (1996)

9. ̂ Foy, R.R. "Chopin's Desiree's Baby". Explicatory 49 (1991): 222-224.

1. Toth, Emily. Reviews the essay 'The Shadows of the First Biographer: The Case of Kate Chopin', 26 Southern Review, 1990.

2. Seyersted, Per. Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State UP, 1985.

3. Le Marquand, Jane. "Kate Chopin as a Feminist: Subverting the French Androcentric Influence". Deep South 2 (1996).

4. Chopin, Kate. The Story of an Hour.

5. Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening. "Interview: David Chopin, Kate's Grandson". <http://www.pbs.org/katechopin/interviews.html> 14 March 2008.

6. Le Marquand, Jane. "Kate Chopin as a Feminist: Subverting the French Androcentric Influence". Deep South 2 (1996).

7. Foy, R.R. "Chopin's Desiree's Baby". Explicator 49 (1991): 222-224.

[edit] Resources

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Kate Chopin

Foy, R.R. "Chopin's Desiree's Baby". Explicator" 49 (1991): 222-224.

Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening. "Interview: David Chopin, Kate's Grandson". <http://www.pbs.org/katechopin/interview.html> 14 March 2008.

"Kate O'Flaherty Chopin", A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Vol. I (1988), p. 176

Le Marquand, Jane. "Kate Chopin as Feminist: Subverting the French Androcentric Influence". Deep South 2 (1996).

Seyersted, Per. Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State UP, 1985.

Toth, Emily. Reviews the essay 'The Shadows of the First Biographer: The Case of Kate Chopin', 26 Southern Review, 1990.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Chopin"Categories: 1851 births | 1904 deaths | American businesspeople | American novelists | American short story writers | American women writers | French Americans | Irish-American writers | Louisiana writers | Missouri writers | Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana | People from Louisiana | People from Natchitoches, Louisiana | People from New Orleans, Louisiana | People from St. Louis, Missouri | St. Louis Walk of Fame members

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(See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity.