Woman's Nascent Consciousness In Nineteenth Century America: Reading Kate Chopin's The Awakeing

The American female Regional Novel writer---Kate Chopin in her work The Awakening depicts the plight of women in the nineteenth century, who were caught between fulfilling their traditional role and searching for a new social order. Despite the difficulty of determining a new identity in a society where great pressure is placed on women to maintain the conventional social function, the protagonist Edna manages to resist conventional responsibilities, to achieve a level of autonomy, self-growth, personal identity, and spiritual awakening. This thesis is divided into three chapters. Chapter One, "Introduction", includes a biographical background of the female writer and a brief introduction to the content of her classic work The Awakening as well as the remarks on it. Chapter Two gives an analysis to the external concern to woman from the concept of space with the distinction between public sphere and private sphere, and it is divided by sections of "Woman and Family", "Woman and Society". Chapter Three gives an analysis to the internal concern to woman from the spirit, and it is divided by sections of "A Semiotic Approach", "Woman and Sexuality", "Woman and Spirituality". By proceeding a Kristevan psychoanalysis to the heroine, the thesis explores the female protagonist's conscious and unconscious longing for her self-awakening and autonomy in the nineteenth century patriarchal American society. With enormous courage, the female protagonist chooses to embrace her nascent consciousness of her selfhood regardless of her inability to change the conventional social order. In this sense, Edna becomes a definitive frontier feminist.