The Awakening, Kate Chopin

Frank look at a woman’s life at the turn of the 19th century

A novel about a woman who questioned not only her role in society, but he standards of society itself.

Examples of a socially acceptable “role” Edna could adopt:

  • a perfect mother and wife
  • an independent but somewhat ostracized “old maid”
  • the “flirt”
  • one of the “young lovers”
  • a pious almost single-mindedly religious woman.

Men – operate as catalysts for these choices

Frequently focused on Creole culture of Louisiana

Unique regional features include a heritage that draws from French and Spanish ancestry, a complex caste system, the settings of urban New Orleans and rural vacation retreats

Genre:

  • Bildungsroman – novel of intellectual, spiritual or moral evolution
  • Kunslerroman – novel of artistic realization or development
  • Shares elements of and is heavily influenced by the local color genre

Setting:

Time – 1899at a time when the Industrial Revolution and the feminist movement were beginning to emerge yet were still overshadowed by the prevailing attitudes of the 19th century

Themes:

  • Solitude as the Consequence of Independence
  • Implications of Self-Expression

Motifs:

  • Music
  • Children
  • Houses

Symbols:

ArtOcean, Sea, or Gulf

ClothesPiano playing

BirdsSleep

Sea

Food

Houses

Learning to swim

The moon

  • Foreshadowing
  • Realism: a literary movement in the 19th century that focused on reporting aspects of “common” life (remember common is a relative term); slice of life; accurate representation of reality; the use of the imagination to represent things as common sense supposes they are
  • Verisimilitude – the appearance of truth

Myths and Fairy Tales:

There are no direct mentions of myths and fairy tales except for the Gulf spirit, but there are many subtle allusions to a body of mythological or folkloric tales:

Classical Myths:

  • Aphrodite (Greek) or Venus (Latin) – goddess of love and beauty
  • Artemis (Greek) or Diana (Latin) – Apollo’s twin sister and the daughter of Zeus. Goddess of the woods, wild things, and was huntsman-in-chief to the gods. Protection of the young and fertility goddess; associated with the defense of women
  • Echo and Narcissus: echo – a beautiful nymph who was overly fond of talking. Fell in love with Narcissus
  • Gulf Spirit: other spirits in folklore who come out of the sea, appear at special times, looking for a soul mate or wife.
  • Icarus
  • Orpheaus and Eurydice.
  • Psyche:
  • Selene or Luna

Fairy Tales:

  • Pattern and structure: fairy tales that have women as their central characters are usually structured in this manner: a quick summary of their childhood where the reader learns that they are beautiful, good, and protected from the outside world. In their adolescence a spell is either cast upon them or an old spell takes effect. In most cases the spell leads to sleep, but it may lead to isolation. Te effect of this sleep/isolation is that the woman is kept innocent, so that when the hero arrives and breaks the spell or finds the woman, she is pure and worthy of love and happiness.
  • Think about what this means for Edna.
  • When men are the heroes the pattern is different: they are constructed more in keeping with stories of quests. The character faces a series of challenges or tests, completes them, and takes his place in the world. Spells are usually problems to overcome. Transforming spells separate male centered fairy tales even more from their female counterparts. When a man is changed in appearance, he can no longer rely on his looks, but must succeed through his actions.

NOVELS OF FEMALE AWAKENING:

  • They tend to have protagonists who grow significantly “only after fulfilling the fairy-tale expectation that they will marry and live ‘happily ever after’, they frequently portray a break from marital, rather than parental, authority and thus are often novels of adultery.
  • The development of the story is usually “compressed into brief emphatic moments. Since the significant changes are internal, flashes of recognition often replace the continuous unfolding of actions”