The Making Of A New Woman

This thesis aims to cultivate the primitive archetypes and images in Kate Chopin's masterpiece The Awakening. The well-known American female novelist, Willa Cather, values The Awakening as Madame Bovary of America. Like each eternal classic, the underlying reason why The Awakening could make the great and everlasting influence on people of different times not merely lies in the novelist's mastering of the language and the exquisite structure of the novel but also lies in the motifs of the common pursuit and exploration of human being represented in the novel. It is the common pursuit of mankind that Edna's constant and profound thinking of selfhood and her courageous seeking for freedom of soul represent regardless of cruelly religious and social bondages. The primordial motifs embodied in the novel strike a responsive chord in hearts of readers and inspire readers'longing for freedom as well as the pursuit of essence of life.This thesis holds that the process of Edna's awakening is the process of rebirth and the making of a new woman. Edna has been thinking constantly of the essence of life and self-value. She realizes her psychological growth in the end. Interpreted from the inner level, Edna could not merely be regarded as a female but more significantly as an individual experiencing the process of self-realization and self-fulfillment to pursue the significance and value of life. In fact, the essence of Jung's archetypal theory is to cultivate a sound personality so as to deliver modern people in danger. In his famous book Modern Man in Search of A Soul, Jung points out that modern men wander on the brink of the spiritual world and tremble with fear on the thin ice. This kind of description makes us recall the solitude of the existentialist, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche's description of decadent and nihilistic situation of modern men. Therefore, Jung believes the root cause of spiritual crisis lies in the loss of the primitive mythology, primitive images and collective unconsciousness passed down generation by generation. All that above mentioned are the soul and the origin of humanity. Jung discovers the cure for modern people's spiritual wasteland and enlightens modem men to pursue the "soul"--archetypes and the primitive images to accomplish the spiritual fulfillment. Let us follow Edna's pursuing path of selfhood to obtain the relief of our soul through interpreting the archetypes and the primitive images in The Awakening.