PhDr. Mariana Machová, Ph.D.
UAN/DAML
16.01.2014
Is Edna's end in The Awakening a victory, or a failure?
The Awakening, a novel written by Kate Chopin, was first published in 1899 and did not receive very positive critics as it deals with the subject of a woman's struggle for intellectual and sexual equality. A twenty-eight-year-old Edna Pontellier is not just a simple character of a married woman with a wealthy husband and two children, but, above all, a young sensitive woman longing for her own physical, mental and social independence in the 19th century society where women were supposed to satisfy menôs needs and respect their own social roles. At the moment when Edna finishes her "process of awakening" dying in the sea, the key question if her end is a victory or a failure undoubtedly arises. However, the answer is not as definite as it may seem to be since Ednaôs final decision is a result of several steps she has gradually made towards her self-discovery.
Kate Chopin in 1894
Photoportrait of writer Kate Chopin
English: First ed title pgFirst, it is important to point out that Edna was born into a well-off Presbyterian family in Kentucky, and having lost her mother very soon, she was brought up in quite cold, rather impersonal family backgrounds where emotions and feelings were unacceptable. She marries a wealthy New Orleans businessman, Léonce Pontellier, probably because she wants to rebel against her father who is not satisfied with her choice: "She fancied there was a sympathy of
thought and taste between them, in which fancy she was mistaken. Add to this the violent opposition of her father and her sister Margaret to her marriage with a Catholic, and we need seek no further for the motives which led her to accept Monsieur Pontellier for her husband." (Chopin 22)
Unfortunately, she is a kind of woman...