The Awakening Essays

11th Grade

The Awakening

“In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. [...] Every great work of art [...] is a celebration, an act of...

The Awakening

Kate Chopin's master novel, The Awakening, takes the modern reader to an earlier time while still provoking the questions of morality and self-sacrifice that exist in the present age. Edna Pontellier, the protagonist of the story, places herself...

The Awakening

In the novel, The Awakening, Kate Chopin takes Edna Pontellier on a journey of self-discovery. In doing this, she uses many symbols to show the relationship between Edna and the world. Clothing, or rather, the lack thereof, displays this...

The Awakening

In her novel, The Awakening, Kate Chopin shows Edna Pontelliers confrontations with society, her imprisonment in marriage and Ednas exploration of her own sexuality. Chopin also portrays Edna as a rebel, who after her experiences at Grand Isle...

The Awakening

Society of the 19th Century gave a heightened meaning to what it means to be a woman. According to the commonly known "code of true womanhood," women were supposed to be docile, domestic creatures, whose main concerns in life were to be the...

The Awakening

Characters win the reader's attention through common grounds of understanding, situation, or personality. Playing the major role, protagonists possess distinguishing characteristics of a complex character. In The Awakening, Kate Chopin develops...

The Awakening

Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, has borne a burden of criticism and speculation since its initial publication. While many past critics have chastised Chopin and condemned the novel for the portrayal of an adulterous heroine, modern responses...

The Awakening

Twenty-first century domestic statistics scream with divorce. Although the relationship between husband and wife is far more equal since the days of Kate Chopin's "The Dream of an Hour," rampant divorce and single-parent families still make it...

The Awakening

Awakening via the Omniscient Narrator

In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Edna Pontellier transforms from a wealthy product of mid 19th century Creole society into an independent, beautiful soul that acknowledges none of the boundaries of societal...

The Awakening

In The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, unsatisfied Edna longs for something to sweep her off her feet. When it does, in the form of fresh love Robert, Edna realizes that she must choose between her family and her own mind and soul. At this realization,...

The Awakening

Edna Pontellier's domestic situation is nothing out of the ordinary for a wealthy New Orleans family. Her roles as a housewife and a mother exemplify society's expectations of upper-class women during the Victorian era. Edna's burning desire to...

The Awakening

The final, powerful scene of The Awakening by Kate Chopin provides a fitting end to Edna’s long struggle between expectation and desire. Edna’s traditional role of wife and mother holds her back from her wish to be a free woman. Both the sea and...

The Awakening

The central conflict in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is the self-discovery, or “awakening,” of the protagonist, Edna Pontellier. Throughout the course of the novel she transforms from the bored, submissive wife of Lèonce Pontellier to a vibrant,...

The Awakening

Kate Chopin seamlessly integrates plot with setting in her novel The Awakening. Various locations mold Edna Pontellier into a bold transgressor of outdated social conventions, and allow for her dynamic growth. Edna grows accustomed to the lax...

The Awakening

An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. (Chopin, 28)

The Awakening portrays a woman caught in the feminine role defined by her society. The...

College

The Awakening

In Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening, Edna's marriage is complicated. Her marriage is both a source of positive and negative influence on her, in that it both confines, imprisons, and depresses her while also providing her with an impetus,...