A Woman Perished In The World Of Binary Oppositions---a Study Of The Awakening From The Perspective Of Binary Oppositions

The conception of binary oppositions is a wide-used critique in critical theory which means a binary opposition is a pair of theoretical opposites. It has been adopted in Greek philosophy, structuralism and also poststructuralist theories. It is regarded as an elementary organizer of human philosophy, culture and language in structuralism. Seeing from a traditional way of thinking, binary oppositions has been proved to be a practical tool in understanding and analyzing.The Awakening is Kate Chopin’s masterpiece which represents women’s existence during the Victorian age. Victorian age was a male/female patriarchal society. The South America then was definitely male-dominated. The woman was not free and constricted to domestic sphere. Then they got a nice name——"angel in the house". If they get involved into any man’s stuff,"madwoman in the attic" will be the synonym for them for a lifetime. As a wife, Victorian women must remain faithful to their husbands. Extra-marital relation was condemned and the woman got involved in the relation was called "prostitute".Edna Pontellier, the heroine in the novel, is a woman with rebellious spirit. She is quite different from the other women in Victorian age. She undergoes a furious spiritual conflict between what she wants to be and what the society wants her to be. Finally the inner world prevails. She makes a decision to abandon the social conventions and to pursue her value of life. She does not follow Adele’s step to be a house wife and learns from Madame Reisz to be a "mad" woman. In this point of view, she breaks the binary oppositions of angle and madwoman. She falls in love with Robert. But she refuses to be his wife because of the awakening of her female sexuality brought by Arobin. Edna longs for the unity of physical pleasure and spiritual love which can’t be realized by her marriage. Thus, the binary oppositions of wife and prostitute are reversed. After the broken dreams of wishful roles, she decides to put an end to her life and swim to the sea.Edna is born to be a revolutionary. She is brave enough to perfect herself and pursue her individuality. In the process of awakening, Edna stands on the opposite side of Victorian womanhood. Swimming the sea is the symbol of looking forward freedom and ending her life in the sea shows strong dissatisfaction and unyieldingness.