An analysis of Edna Pontellier’s position between diverg-ing female roles in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening
Contents
Contents 3
1 Introduction 4
2 The two competing female roles in The Awakening 4
2.1 The mother woman 5
2.2 The artist woman 6
3 Edna’s experiments with the two differing roles 7
3.1 Edna and the role of the mother woman 8
3.2 Edna and the role of the artist woman 9
3.3 Edna and the role of the free woman 12
4 Conclusion 14
5 Works Cited 16
1 Introduction
In this paper I will analyze Kate Chopin’s character, Edna Pontellier, concerning her position within the social structures of her nineteenth-century Creole environment. After outlining the two dominant female roles presented in The Awakening, I will po-sition Edna’s character in relation to those roles. I will show that at times Edna is drawn towards aspects of both female roles. However, during the course of the ac-tion it becomes clear that Edna is searching for her own female role and a different position in society than the ones already existing in her environment.
At the end of the novel, it becomes obvious that she is not strong enough to pursue her newly found role. I will show how her quest for identity must lead to destruction. I will end this paper by giving a short summary of my analysis and discussing differ-ent conclusions.
2 The two competing female roles in The Awakening
In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, the main character Edna Pontellier is confronted with two diverse female roles embedded in nineteenth-century patriarchal society. This society expected women to be the moral guardian of the household, responsi-ble for the bearing of the children and their education. However, they were granted little room for individuality. In fact, women were rather looked upon as objects, pos-sessions of the men with the sole purpose of living for the family and fulfilling the men’s desires.
Next to this society-approved role of the ‘mother woman’,...