Kate Chopin - The Awakening (1899)

Who Who was Kate Chopin?

Kate Chopin was a writer very famous for her Creole and Cajun story-making, and her writing did not only influence the local color movement, but also the women's movement. Her work The Awakening shows the situation of a woman after the South had lost the American Civil War and when slavery had already been abolished. Her novel, joined by Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), were two great novels of the Reconstruction Literature that deeply influenced American literature. The novel The Awakening by Kate Chopin, released in 1899 and set in late century New Orleans (Louisiana), centers around Edna Pontellier's life, the female protagonist of the novel. Edna struggles with conflicting views on womanhood, motherhood, and societal expectations of femininity. Edna feels unhappy in her marriage, and therefore she explores female sexuality and liberation, making the book a crucial early feminist work.

What is The Awakening about?

The protagonist called Edna does not seem to be content with following the conventions of society in the late 1800s, which is having to be a perfect wife and mother. At the beginning of the novel, she obeys her husband Leónce and follows the customs of Creole New Orleans, but she feels deeply anguished and does not seem to willfully comply with the female role she is expected to fulfill. This is seen in the novel when the reader, already in the beginning, is presented with Edna’s inner thoughts in respect to her life as a married woman: “She could not have told why she was crying. Such experiences as the foregoing were not uncommon in her married life” (The Awakening 7), and “an indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish” (The Awakening 7). Such demonstrates that Edna is unsatisfied with her marriage and feels the system oppressing her, forcing her to conceal her true self and emotions.

·In a male-dominated society where men exert control through economic and social means, she isolates herself from society and keeps an outsider status to maintain her independence. Edna earns enough money to leave her husband’s home and move into a place of her own through another passion of hers: painting. Edna rejects the control of others, like her husband, and dismisses community expectations, choosing instead to trust in her own judgment. She challenges her husband's power at home and in society, refusing to obey his commands and abandoning social responsibilities to follow her own desires.

·Chopin's female figure represents the emotions of women who were dissatisfied with being limited to traditional household duties without any aspirations or wishes. Chopin intended to demonstrate the difficulties women encountered when trying to achieve sexual and marital satisfaction and independence in the patriarchal culture's narrative. Throughout the novel, Edna comes to understand the conflict between her need for independence and society's demands. This realization ultimately leads to a tragic outcome as she faces the constraints of societal norms and chooses to break free through a definitive act of self-affirmation, which would be the suicide she commits in the end at sea.