"The Awakening" by Kate Chopin.

Essay by jlcangel77College, UndergraduateA+, May 2003

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In The Awakening by Kate Chopin, the setting is in the late 1800s on Grand Isle in Louisiana. The main character of the story is Edna Pontellier who is not a Creole. Other important characters are Adele Ratignolle, Mr. Ratgnolle, Robert Lebrun, and Leonce Pontellier who are all Creole's. In the Creole society the men are dominant. Seldom do the Creole's accept outsiders to their social circle, and women are expected to provide well-kept homes and have many children. Edna and Adele are friends who are very different because of their the way they were brought up and they way they treat their husbands. Adele is a loyal wife who always obeys her husband's commands. Edna is a woman who strays from her husband and does not obey her husband's commands. Kate Chopin uses Adele to emphasize the differences between her and Edna.

Edna Pontellier is not a Creole, so her relationship with her husband is difficult.

In her husband's eyes she has failed in her duties as a wife and as a mother to her own children. What Enda's husband expects from her is never what she does. Leonce comes home in the middle of the night and talks to Edna while she is sleeping. Then he tells her that Raoul one of their sons is sick and tells her to get up and check on him. Edna had never really had the desire to have children but she did anyway. She was not a "mother-woman" because she would rather be alone sometimes; she did not feel she had to be with her children twenty-four hours a day. If one Edna's boys "....took a tumble whilst at play, he would not apt rush crying to his mother's arms for comfort; he would more likely pick himself up"(16). Enda...