Male Birds In The Cage:the Unawakened Men In Kate Chopin's The Awakening

The nineteenth century American woman writer Kate Chopin's stories are abundant with the image of a rebellious housewife,unsatisfied with the monotonous domestic life,seeking some unique channels for a new way of living.Most of Chopin's scholarships thus cluster in the field of female issues,and such is the case with the criticism on The Awakening.Much has been written about those female characters in the novel,while those male characters are largely ignored by critics,and if there are some analyses of them,they,at their best,point to the conclusive argument of female issues.In an attempt to seek further the Chopin mystery,this thesis gives the whole critical ground to those male characters,pointing out that all the characters in the novel,whether men or women,are the victims of the patriarchal social codes,and then further examining Chopin's literary stance.Comparing the deeply etched social code,patriarchy in particular,to a bird cage,and both men and women birds confined in the cage,this thesis first sets to investigate the cage of the 1890s' New Orleans,which,in spite of its flirtatious and frivolous social atmosphere,is still in essence a miniature of a rigid ideological and conventional society with both men and women adhering to their respective gender roles.This thesis,next,engages in the detailed analysis of the five major male characters in the novel by categorizing them into two groups,three men in the cage and the other two out of the cage with the consideration of their respective ages and living experiences.The cage is a society,an adult world,which most men and women are swirled in,like Leonce Pontellier,Robert Lebrun,and Alcee Arobin,but some people are spared the confinement and transiently living out of the cage,like Victor Lebrun and Docter Mandelet,who are either too young or too old to get involved in the society.Each of the five men is a perfect epitome of one kind of men in that society,the privileges they enjoy are enumerated,and then the latent suffocating spiritual and physical torture of the three men in the cage revealed,and the special case for the two out of the cage speculated.This thesis thus argues that whether the male characters of different age groups in the novel are confined in the cage or stay free out of the cage,none of them can escape the shackles of male gender role and the sufferings accompanying it.Compared with their female counterparts who,greatly oppressed by the inferior gender role,has already been awakening,sensed the underlying social code that victimizes them,and begins to rise up to rebel,men,poisoned by the privilege their gender role grants them,are still slumbering in the cage,and is thus helpless in diagnosing the cause of their daily sufferings.The last chapter,based on the above analysis of those male characters' plight and sufferings,turns to reexamine the author Kate Chopin' s literary stance and artistry,then to propose that in the sense that Chopin is ambivalent in women's final possible victory against the social gender codes,she is actually an author of universal concern,extending her sympathy to men,to the suffering of mankind in the shadow of the social mechanism.This thesis comes finally to the conclusion that Kate Chopin is succinct in revealing the ideological social mechanism in her novel,and hopefully the investigation of her male characters' sufferings can contribute to this illumination.By the above efforts,this thesis aims at broadening the horizon of Chopin' s scholarship,and contributing,if it can,to the ongoing search for Chopin' s charisma and mystique.