¶ … Awakening
ONE (a): The Awakening speaks to the fact that women were breaking away from the dependence they had on men (and the power men had over women as a cultural tradition). When Edna learns to swim, for example, she is extremely happy that she has control over something that propels her; Chopin uses Edna's emerging independence (and Edna's repulsion for the "…vague, tangled, chaotic…exceedingly disturbing" truth about her own life) as a metaphor for this breaking away from the role women played (Complete Works, 995). On page 1,000 Edna enters the water with no clothes and feels like a "new-born creature. Chopin's book broke literary tradition and created quite a stir because of the racy life and changes of Edna that led to her rejection of her wifely duties; the literary world, and the world of readers, were shocked because wives traditionally had obligations, and hence Chopin broke the mold. That male's traditional mold had been well established by DH Lawrence, James Joyce, and other novelists, and by portraying Edna as a woman who desires emotional closeness and intimacy -- and leaves the bonds of marriage to find those feminine experiences -- Chopin changed literary conventions.
THREE (c): Culture and setting play an important part in the success of a novel. For example, Edna dreams of becoming an artist and she is drawn to Mlle. Reisz because…
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