The Awakening by Kate Chopin - Essay Example

The Awakening The awakening was written by Kate Chopin in the nineteenth century. The novel uses literature images where the description of the environment relates to, and brings out the narrative’s main themes and characterizations. In the novel, Edna, the central character of the novel, and the “Awakening” for which the designation refers, seek to unshackle herself from the customary womanly works of a wife, a mother or lover with an aim of practicing an unrestrained comprehensiveness of being. Instead of being a decorative element, pictorial, nature description in Chopins book is intrinsic to the progression of the plot, aims and point of view. She plays an important role in which the technique of focalization, where representations of nature depict the real scene as physically as seen by some characters, and as psychologically acknowledged by those identical actors in the story. This essay will examine the notion of exterior and interior spaces as depicted by this novel. Chopin bases her novel on the disagreement between interiors and the exterior where the heroine tries to struggle to run away from the imprisoning reality. Doors, actual or figurative, are at all times shutting to impound Edna. The central character comes to find out the Otherness of mutually the physical and communal worlds apart from an interior self of which she was barely aware before the establishment of the novels proceedings. Her divine awakening involves getting the insight into a disturbing truth in herself while she realizes, in outer life, a sympathetic and disturbing correspondence with her recently stirred feelings. There also comes an opposition in the enlightening distance linking Ednas Kentucky Presbyterian environment and the principles of the Louisiana Creole neighborhood where the central character is an uneasy associate as an outcome of her six-year matrimony to the New Orleans dealer Léonce Pontellier. That Creole people find themselves as recipients of racial discrimination and sexism, plummeting adult females to the category of "mother-women." meanwhile Chopin reports the racist condition devoid of criticizing it, she makes of her novel an anterior attack on the male dominance of women (Wolff 125). Even if Edna enjoys a universal reception and even compassion amongst the Creoles, she sees herself as an emotional and linguistic outsider in their own Francophone corporation. As an anthropologist analyzes the inconsistency of culture, the female protagonist is trapped between her present condition in a communal scheme with its diverse demands and her past knowledge of Protestant independence on a Kentucky stallion farm and a Mississippi agricultural estate. Edna would have to face a representation of the fragile and submissive Southern lady that had its genesis in the oratory supporting slavery. While meeting the requirements to the mores of Creole culture does bring a sagacity of emotional safety, the female protagonist rejects the religious desiccation that is caused when one complies with tradition, and she seeks to emphasize autonomy at the outlay of one being on the outside. When the Creoles depart New Orleans for the summer vacations to Grand Isle, they replicate their urban atmosphere there to create the beach world to be a scene of communal integration. In the midst, the apparently unrestricted sphere and spaciousness of the seaside retreat, there predominates a feeling of constriction as vacationers must monitor "les convenances." Although living in cottages, the Creoles are linked to each other by thin bridges connecting the buildings jointly. They also feast at the similar table where they follow their formalized rituals to complete their self-sufficient world. A spirit of isolation also prevails on Grand Isle, a position so out of time that Sunday correspondents arrive late from urban. Since the island stands amid the limitations of the town and the boundlessness of the ocean, this captivating setting on the Gulf of Mexico does rouse in the central character’s feelings of rebellion that no appeal to communal convention will ever repress. There by the sea Edna realizes for the initial time to the disagreement between the superficial demand for compliance and the interior desire to confront convention: "the twofold life, the outer survival which conforms, and the interior life which questions" (277). The agitated waves of the gulf demonstrate the contradictory disposition of landscape in the book that normally corresponds to the currents of unsolved emotions in the protagonist’s heart (Bloom 10). Ednas development towards self-realization comes to be evident on a Sunday expedition to the little island Chênière Caminada in the group of her young lover Robert Lebrun. One of the traditions of Creole community that at all times astonishes the central character with her Calvinist prudery is the virtuous courage between matrimonial women and younger solo males. As long as those associations are conducted inside the bounds of New Orleans respectability, no husband refuses to the innocent attentions rewarded to his wife. But in the Chopins novel there is a study of exactly the emotional need to surpass arbitrary restrictions and the task that environment plays to promote the escape from confined conditions. The channel by water to the village of Chênière Caminada shows rite of freedom: "Sailing across the bay Edna felt as if she were being borne away from some anchorage which had held her fast" (299). The protagonists split from a precedent of oppression to institutions and traditions happens when she hurriedly departs from the disgusting interior impression of morning gathering at the islands rural community church. The public and the church are here amalgamated to stifle legitimate thoughts of disobedience. Edna must escape the group of worshipers similar to the figurative "lady in black" eternally she holds her velvet prayer-book in a manner of deathlike sorrow usually connected to the ladies closely following after the two insouciant youthful lovers as if to advocate Thanatos in recreation of Eros (Wolff 454). The time that Edna and Robert expend roaming the Chênière Caminada and enjoying the benevolence of the modest cottage replenish the pastoral custom of the locus amoenus: the pleasing shelter of the apparent eternal serenity. However instead of suspending the novels prime action, this countrified interval advances the central character’s sensual conversion. Even though the countryside initially appeared trapped in a rigid likeness, upon Ednas "awakening" from sleep in the white clarity of Madame Antoines cottage she happens to see the island as if changed into a ground of attraction (Fletcher 120). Extensively the sheets on the white bed in Madame Antoines pastoral cabin are made aromatic by Laurel, consecrated to Apollo in this book whose female protagonist will momentarily be prominent in the vividness of a lethal dawn to a state similar to that of a pagan idol. The antagonism amid inner and outer disappears magically in this pastoral episode where natural world smoothly pervades the defensive and wholesome shelter (Radcliff-Umstead 127). Gardens also help in this account as diminutive examples of the locus amoenus, places that can intercede amid inside and outside, among city and country. The Lebrun townhouse situated on the Chartres lane at is first seen to be prison-like owing to the iron bars before the back door and upper windows, but the sideway gate opens to a garden surrounded by an elevated fence. Still in belatedly autumn the Lebrun backyard remains a hospitable commune with its enlightened furnishings of bamboo chairs, chaise sprawl and desk for food and drinks in the daylight. The immured backyard is a region of safety and relaxation. Even though Edna routinely regards the Pontellier residence as a place of estrangement, her husbands most eye-catching ownership, at certain times when the relatives are away, she enjoys in strolling the clammy backyard, walking slowly, and attending to the decoration of the plants: "The backyard smelled so nice and looked so attractive in the afternoon sunshine" (339). Delicate scent and radiant light kindle in her the animated feelings of having first awakened to the earths attractiveness. Whereas other grounds have allowed Edna the opportunity of communicating with her deepest thoughts, the restaurant grounds offers her the chance for intimate interaction with her darling Robert to clear away all the tensions that is caused by his sudden disappearance during the summer at the Grand Isle for a profitable undertaking in Mexico. The orange trees happen to be an emblematic of the prohibited love that they at the moment are about to concede to each other. While ones confidential garden might be a site for establishing management of the substantial world through horticultural efforts, this backyard restaurant in a communal but moderately secluded place allows Edna and Robert to accomplish briefly a loving nearness through the agreement that they lastly reach. The inspirational enclosure of private grounds verdant with anticipation makes achievable the transparent immediacy of previously reserved sentiments. Grounds and open fields both depict the flowers whose brilliant colors and charming fragrances stimulate Edna to a wakefulness of her concealed self. Boundaries of yellow camomile mark the boundary amid the vacationers cottages at the Grand Isle and the seaside as if to point out the separating point between town culture and the continual gulf. The female protagonist repeatedly picks flowers to embellish the interior of her residence with their attractiveness, a blossoming attractiveness with which she can be acknowledged in her awakening and opening to new, commanding sensations (Radcliff-Umstead 128). In the process of communicating starting from the interior to the exterior, windows are used in the novel as symbols of anticipation or of disappointment (Brombert 57-61). Not only do windows allow a vision to the outside, but also they allow brightness and natures perfumes to pass through inner places. Through their disclosure of the outer humanity, windows alleviate the messy impression of rooms full of flamboyantly expensive furniture, as at the Pontellier residence where in a defiant mood Edna breaks a pot bought by her spouse and she calms down by looking directly out into the darkness. Sometimes a private window surveillance post gives a sense of tranquility and an intuition of gaining power over situations, as with Dr. Mandelet, the family doctor that Léonce Pontellier consults in a husbandly apprehension over his wifes unpredictable behavior. This impartial but extremely reflective personality enjoys his semi-retirement analysis by his studys window and a gaze out to the backyard whose long spread shelters the doctors office from road traffic. The thoughtful tranquility achieved by the doctor at his window watch allows him to gaze objectively but understandingly into the concealed emotions of his disturbed patients (Radcliff-Umstead 129). Ednas intractable death causes her to surpass the exclusively political insinuations of womans rebellion from social limitations which only Dr. Mandelet with his sagacious aloofness perceived as stimulating her flight from Léonces power. She gets the negative authority of an awakening unto death by declining to go back to that shore of patriarchal authenticity. Womans free responsibility in or outside the community must admit that she is part of a ordinary order with horses, birds, the ocean, the moon, the sun and waving meadows. Chopins novel uses a story syntax based on descriptions of nature to symbolize a heroines delicious awareness of her struggle for liberation. Works cited Bloom, Harold. Kate Chopin. New York, NY: Chelsea House, 2007. Print Brombert, Victor. The Novels of Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techniques. Princeton: Princeton UP, (1966). Fletcher, Marie. "The Southern Woman in the Fiction of Kate Chopin."Louisiana History (1966): 117-132. Radcliff-Umstead, Douglas. "Literature of Deliverance: Images of Nature in The Awakening." Details: Southern Studies 1.2 (Summer 1990): p127-147. (1990). Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. "Kate Chopin and the Fiction of Limits:" Désirées Baby"."The Southern Literary Journal (1978): 123-133. Read More