¶ … Awakening mother-women ( Adele Ratignolle) mother-Women ( Edna
Back to Sleep: Edna's Fate
Kate Chopin's The Awakening functions as a turn of the century tragedy regarding the domesticated lot of women in American society. Its protagonist, Edna Pontellier, is forced to forsake all of the wonder, delight, and sensations of life -- those that are intrinsically hers, anyway -- for an unyielding society in which her only virtue is that of raising children and her role as a mother. That her reaction to her fate is decidedly different from that of the other mothers portrayed within the novel only serves to underscore the author's point that women must sacrifice their essential selves (their aspirations, their desires, their link to crave the very things that animate their children and which they themselves craved as children) to become credible matriarchs due to the "external, repressive force" (Wolff 449) of society. Edna was unwilling to make that sacrifice, and therefore lost her life along with the passions that animated it, rendering this tale one of tragedy.
The author's central premise in this story, that women must distinguish themselves from their ardor for life in order to become accomplished mothers as society would have them, is evinced through an analysis of a wide range of female characters. None of them are able to combine true interests of their own, outside of their domestic duties, with the conventional responsibilities of a good mother. And yet there is no shortage of the sort of staid, tranquil domestics that exemplify the virtues of motherhood -- many of which Edna herself does not possess nor entirely desires to possess -- particularly when one considers the example of Adele Ratignolle, which the following quotation describing quintessential mother-women demonstrates.
It was easy to know them…They were women who idolized their children, worshipped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels…one of them was the embodiment of every womanly grace...
It is Edna who achieves both the awakening of the title, the awareness of how the social traditions imposed on her are stifling her and preventing her from expressing herself as she would wish, and also fails in that she cannot overcome these traditions and so chooses suicide rather than continue under such a repressive system. Chopin implies that there is a danger in awakening, in understanding the nature of
Edna's behavior has been foreshadowed through a conversation about her past with Mrs. Ratignolle in which Edna tells Adele of her childhood and the actions she took and the choices she made. Edna tells Adele, "I was a little unthinking child in those days, just following a misleading impulse without question" (61). Edna has not come far from her childhood days of defying what society thought should be done with
Kate Chopin's remarkable novel "The Awakening," Edna contemplates her ideals about life, love and remaining true to one's self, despite the conformity that typically changes one's nature. Edna is one who has always kept her true identity hidden, seen only by herself; a notion that is explained by the narrator as "the dual life -- that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions." (p. 35) The struggle
Although he may be clumsy at times, he is in many ways just as much a victim of society as Edna. He was taught to expect certain things of a wife, and when Edna's temperament does not allow her to fulfill these functions, it is only natural for him to be confused. He tries to make her happy by giving her material things, and listening to the experts, like
She begins to let her own creativity flow and through her art takes a closer view of her own father, who has controlled her since she was a young child. With her pen in hand, Edna realizes that she need not be caged in and just copy what she sees. Instead, she can draw freehand with her own interpretations. She starts to recognize the power that she has as
She is not asking Adele for permission and Adele does not try to force her to do or not do anything. She does kindly ask her to think of her children but she does not attack her. Adele does not understand Edna when she tells her that she would give her money and her life for her children but not herself. Her belief system is too different from Edna's
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