Feminist Thinking In The Awakening

The Awakening, written by Kate Chopin, is a remarkable work of feminism, therefore interpreting and commenting on it is a challenging task. This thesis is an attempt to analyze Edna, the protagonist, who has a lot of awakening and perplexity with regards to her existence. Through a linguistic analysis of the text, the relationship between formal grammatical patterns and obvious narrative meaning shapes our understanding of Edna`s changing consciousness and serves as an index to its vicissitudes. Lastly, chief symbolism and imagery in this novel are interpreted in view of its theme.Kate Chopin tends to feminism ideology in depicting Edna , a conventional housewife without individual autonomy developing into a new woman with a heartfelt concern for freedom. After six years` marriage, Edna finds herself confined to both her family and children. And her creative power and desire are buried in taking care of her husband and children. Therefore she tends to become dissatisfied with her role in family and raises questions on the value of motherhood and on marriage`s restrictions on women`s self-development.Edna`s two girlfriends serves as foils and mirrors to her.. .Adele Ratingnolle, a mother woman, lacks of self-consciousness. Mlle Reisz, independent, from her Edna can always finds consolation and mutual understanding. Owing to both of them around her , Edna seeks to understand her own needs and actions. Robert`s appearance in her romantic world awakens her. Vaguely in love with Robert, she finds herself too bound by her dull marriage. She begins to dream that she can dream and pursue her ideal and love like men. Luckily she finds expression in painting, through which she enjoys the ease and freedom rather than accomplishment. She weds her love, dream to painting , by which she wants to earn her independent economic status. Then she moves out of her husband`s cage-like house in to a rented one. To her moreconfusion, she finds her in a dilemma that she misses Robert far away in Mexico. Meantime, she cannot help accepting Arobin`s flirt and solicitude.Perplexed Edna comes to awaken. Besides recognizing the necessity in pursuit of life, she finds her marriage has become confinement to her and she longs for freedom and values its significance. Her second awakening is the awareness of erotic impulses, first toward Robert, who she loves , then toward Arobin, who she does not love, but cannot refuse. The third awakening is the awareness of conflict between rights and obligation. In other word, the conflict between individual autonomy and such social roles as a mother, a wife. She cannot understand the sexual control of her. She cannot refuse the playboy Arobin`s flirt. The awakened Edna feels lonely and puzzled. She grows baffled as to the way-out to the paradox between women`s natural existence and their liberation., complexity of sexuality, and contradiction between rights and obligation. .Edna feels lonely enough in pursuit of women`s self-liberation and freedom.Paula A . Treichler, in her The Construction of Ambiguity in The Awakening: A Linguistic Analysis points out that the central narrative of Kate Chopin`s novel The Awakening can be said to concern Edna Pontellier`s struggle to define herself as an active subject, and to cease to be merely the passive object of forces beyond her control. But the precise nature of this struggle, as well as its emotional and psychological dimensions, is less easily articulated. One textual counterpart to this complexity is the ongoing syntactic interplay between active and passive voice which parallel. The verb "awaken", from which the novel`s title and central metaphor desire, formally complicates in a similar way the active and passive elements of Edna`s experience. Both transitive and intransitive, it can take a grammatical object but does not have to : someone can awaken, can be awakened, can awaken someone else. The title of the novel, a noun , is structurally unspecified and can draw on all these possibilities. Edna first appears in The Awakening a...