Edna’s Tragedy In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening:An Archetypal Interpretation

The Awakening, written by Kate Chopin, which is now considered a significant cornerstone in American literature, was denied and reviled by both the common readers and critics when it was first published in1899. It witnessed a great number of harsh reviews from many commentators who defined the protagonist, Edna, as a "morbid" woman, or even worse, condemned the novel as an "unhealthy book". Then, with the Civil Rights and women’s liberation movements, The Awakening began to draw critical attention. After more than fifty years’negligence, Chopin was restored to her well-deserved literary fame.It is widely accepted that self-awareness is a theme that Kate Chopin frequently dealt with in her fiction, and it has been studies by researchers from various research perspectives. However, although the self-awareness of Edna Pontellier, the protagonist of The Awakening, has been thoroughly investigated, it seems that those studies cannot adequately account for her tragic destiny. Therefore the present thesis sets out to provide a new interpretation in use of the theory of goddess psychology. An analysis of the psyche of the female characters, the protagonist in particular, the present thesis is an archetypal study of the novel. The major question that the thesis addresses concerns how Edna Pontellier’s divided psyche contributes to her tragedy. The aim of the thesis is to reveal why Edna’s suicide is inevitable and how conflicting goddesses inside of her leads to the tragedy.The first chapter will review the critical studies conducted on The Awakening both in China and abroad. This is the critical background against which I set out to conduct my study. The second chapter will conduct an in-depth archetypal study of Edna Pontellier. I will show the manifestations of six different goddesses—Persephone, Artemis, Athena. Hera, Demeter, and Aphrodite—in her personality. The third chapter will reveal the conflicts of the six goddesses within her, which underlie all her decisive choices and eventually drive her to suicide. The fourth chapter will mainly compare the similarities and differences between the protagonist and the secondary feminine characters, Madame Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reitz, as a complement for the previous chapter to further explain the tragic life of the heroine. At last, the conclusion is drawn:Edna Pontellier’s final action of suicide is inevitable.As an attempt to analyze the novel from an archetypal perspective, more specifically, a perspective of the goddess psychology, this thesis claims originality in the studies of Kate Chopin’s fiction. I hope this thesis will be helpful for better understanding the masterpiece of Kate Chopin, The Awakening.