Abstract
In this paper I offer a feminist analysis of Mrs. Edna Pontellier’s discovery of her “real self” in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. In a tri-fold process, Edna 1) awakens to her duality, 2) pursues her “real self,” and 3) confronts her frustration with contemporary society. Edna’s initial awakening to her duality while at the summer resort Grand Isle emerges as she distinguishes her “real self” from the patriarchal image of the ideal woman in nineteenth-century American society. As she pursues her identity as an independent individual and rejects her false self, she takes bold steps, beginning with halting the onerous social obligation of hosting a weekly reception day every Tuesday−which she had done for every Tuesday for six years−and then denying the marriage system, then hypocritical religion, and then her patriarchal father. She moves out to her pigeon-house in order to gain financial independence from her husband, but after finding no true escape from her predicament, she drowns herself in the sea. Critics are divided between viewing this ending as Edna’s victory or as proof of her defeat. What I argue is that in this seemingly deviant and immoral act, Edna is expressing her angry rebellion against the social oppression of women, in the American Southern society in the late nineteenth century.
Published Version
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