Edna's Conflicts With 19～(th) Century Social Expectations Of Womanhood Ideal

The Awakening, a work by American woman writer Kate Chopin and once dubbed a spiritual poison by many critics, tells of the heroine Edna Pontellier, who does not reconcile herself to the role of a submissive wife and responsible mother and pursues a life of her own identification.At the end of the nineteenth century women were deprived of rights and freedom in America where Edna lived. They were defined in relation to their husband and were expected to be the ideal women with the virtues of piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity, as describe in "The Cult of True Womanhood." They were expected to uphold the social expectation of an obedient wife and responsible mother to be their ultimate personal desire. They were deprived of the opportunity to choose, denied independent personality and identity as well as the right to own possession. They were not even allowed to go to the street alone. Women who transgressed the values of the society were doomed to bad results.Chopin urged in The Awakening that women should not be defined in terms of their husband and children. They should not be regarded physically, mentally and sexually inferior to males. Instead, they should have their own identification, personality and fulfillment. The protagonist Edna, who abandons the roles and obligations imposed arbitrarily on her and who refuses to model after the ideal woman of the patriarchal society, owns her sole self with self-dependence, self-definition and self-fulfillment by having her own career, moving into her own "pigeon house", enjoying her independent life and choosing her own love. Edna's self-definition, self-emancipation and pursuit of freedom and sovereignty go directly against the nineteenth century social norms and stereotype of woman, which led to the unanimous condemnation and even the banning of this novel.Almost four decades after The Awakening's reestablishment with the rise of feminism movement in the fifties and sixties of the Twentieth Century, critics have yet to reach agreement on this much-debated work. In particular, the debate has focused on the understanding of the personality of the heroine and her act of suicide toward the end of the novel. This paper believes that the fundamental intention of Kate Chopin in writing the novel is that she tries to defy the prevailing assertions that "male is both physically and mentally superior to female; he is more active in sexual selection than female;" that "women are mothers first and individuals second." It attempts to reveal the tough situation of Edna Pontellier in pursuing emancipation of women by looking into the conflicts between her aspirations and the social expectations of her times, which demand daring spirit and unprecedented courage. It shows us how Edna, in pursuit of self-fulfillment, breaks away with established norms and values imposed by American society of the nineteenth century on women. She ends up committing suicide, a desperate move to rebel against the social indifference to the value and rights of women and the restraint and even deprivation of freedom and independence of women. This paper concludes that despite her tragic fate in the end, Edna gains a spiritual and physical rebirth of her self in the sea, which promises the power, honor and independence that she has adhered to in fighting against the pressure from society and family. By ridding herself of all the external expectations of the 19th century, Edna succeeds in self-definition----she is no longer Mrs. Pontellier, the mother of her children, she is herself----Edna.