The Characterization of Edna Pontellier in The Awakening, a Novel by Kate Chopin

Most novels paint women as one who listens to her husband, enjoys being a mother and just goes with the flow in society, especially during this era. That was what was expected. But it is not the life Edna desires any more. Readers first get a glimpse of this when. right after her husband scolds her for not taking more care of the children. she begins to cry. As she mentions before, this sort of thing is “not uncommon in married life," but she is feeling too overwhelmed and unhappy. She describes it as an “indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar pan of her consciousness, filled her whole being with vague anguish". Just as Edna is different from the normal image of a woman of this era, her husband aligns with the norm of men and their ideologies.

After he reproaches her, he points out her “inattention, her habitual neglect of the children” and asks himself “if it wasn’t a mother’s place to look after children. whose on earth was it? He himself had his hands full with his brokerage business. He could not be in two places at once; making a living for his family on the street. and staying at home to see that no harm befell them". Leonce is emphasizing the separate spheres of men and women: he belongs at work and she belongs in the house taking care of the kids, a job that she is failing to uphold. It is also brought to our attention that “Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman. The other women seemed to prevail that summer at the Grand Isle. It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended. protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood.

They were women who idolized their children. worshiped their husbands. and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels". Clearly. Mrs. Pontellier feels as though she does not fit into this society. But just as Johana Smith points out, language has a specific meaning in text because the language was thought to be a masculine centered structure. Hence, “language forces women to choose: either they can imagine and represent themselves as men imagine and represent them. they can choose silence, OR they can create their own feminine language”. In my opinion. I think she was tired of being the silent one, She needed a change, The chapters then go on to describe her metamorphosis into another option, one of creating her own language by creating a new identity for herself and becoming a new person.

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I believe that‘s why she is encouraging a relationship with Robert. Robert is described as “living in Edna’s shadow” because usually, he was the “devoted attendant of some fair dame or damsel, Sometimes it was a young girl, again a widow; but as often as not it was some interesting married woman”. Perhaps Edna was an “interesting married woman" because he detected something different about her; that she was not like the others. Edna soon starts to warm up to the idea of Robert. She mentions how she decided to go to the beach with him, but was not sure where this desire was coming from It was then that she was “beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being and to recognize her relations s an individual to the world about her".

She is carving out her own place in society and being the silent and invisible woman hiding behind a man and his language. In this respect, could it be possible to say that Robert was the one who pushed her towards her “awakening"? Up until this point. she seemed to be like a caterpillar just aching to come out of her cocoon. She even states that she had “apprehended instinctively the dual life-that outward existence which conforms. the inward life which questions". At this point, she does not want to be in the cocoon any longer. she does not want to just conform to society. She is rather questioning her life and herself, trying to find her place in the world.

As the story continues. she seems to be getting in touch with another version of herself as she “began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing her soul" as she continues to "blindly follow what ever impulse that moved her, as if she placed herself in alien hands for direction, and freed her soul of responsibility"  1 also think it is interesting to note the similarities between Edna and Chopin herself. In reading the introduction. she seemed like a “little rebel" towards society herself, The intro points out how she was independent and outspoken. Her relatives were even “scandalized” because of her "frank manner and her habits of smoking cigarettes and strolling the city by herself“. To me. when there is parallels between the author and a character in the book, it makes it all the more interesting and I am eager to see where the rest of the story goes!

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