Mindreading In The Awakenina Of Kate Chopin

The orientation of this dissertation is to place Kate Chopin’s novella,The Awakening within the context of a cognitive perspective.This dissertation includes three parts:reading others’ minds,reading one’s own mind and Edna’s tragic end.The basic idea of mindreading is that people attribute mental states to others as well as to self.People are accustomed to using mindreading to predict others’ actions.Mental states involve intentions,desires and emotions.There are two competing theories of mindreading:Theory Theory(TT)and Simulation Theory(ST)while they all hold the idea that people is capable of inferring others’ mental states on the basis of their outward behavior.The Awakening fully demonstrates failures in communication and understanding of intentions and desires as well as successful ones among various characters.Then I argue that Edna,heroin of the novel successfully reads her mind is achieved through two significant events:memories retrieval and rendering of classic music.Episodic autobiographical memory refers to personally experienced events,recollected in the context of a particular time and place with some reference to oneself as a participant in the episode.It is realized by self-projection,another form of simulation.Memories retrieval needs activate default network,which is different from mirror neuron system(MNS).In the second part of Chapter Two,I seek to illustrate how people read emotions from classic music,combining philosophical thinking and provoking evidence from neuroscience.I argue that simulation theory can combine with persona theories of philosophical thinking of music and assumes that subject will activate MNS to empathize with the performer of rendition or the persona whom subject imagines by himself.Edna acquires self-development and self-construction through rendering of renditions.The awakening of Edna is progressively and spirally achieved.Eventually,this dissertation will discuss three factors giving rise to Edna’s suicide.Firstly,the accouchement makes Edna imagine the future of her two sons.Secondly,misjudgments of Robert’s actions largely are responsible for her tragic end.Thirdly,self-mindreading leads to the emergence of Edna’s inward self whereas she recognizes it is impossible to realize the inward self fully.According to escape theory,suicide is a way to escape self-awareness.