feminaw Kate Chopins The Awakening - Edna Pontellier, A Woman Ahead of her Time :: Chopin Awakening Essays

A Woman Ahead of her Time in The Awakening  Ã‚   When she published The Awakening in 1899, Kate Chopin startled her public with a frank portrayal of a woman’s social, sexual, and spiritual awakening. Because it told its particular truth without judgment or censure, the public disapproved. The idea of a true autonomy for women, or, more astounding yet a single sexual standard for men and women — was too much to imagine. Kate Chopin’s presentation of the awakening of her heroine, Edna Pontellier, her unblinking recognition that respectable women did indeed have sexual feelings proved too strong for many who read her novel. Love and passion, marriage and independence, freedom and restraint these are themes realized in this story. When Edna Pontellier, the heroine of The Awakening announces â€Å"I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself† she is addressing the crucial issue of winning of a self, and the keeping of it. But when Edna Pontellier, raised in Presbyterian propriety and a mother of two sons, responds to another Alcà ©e, Chopin, the public thought, had gone too far. â€Å"I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier’s possessions to dispose of or not† she tells the young man she loves: â€Å"I give myself where I choose. † Twenty-eight, comfortable in a marriage to an older man involved with his business life in New Orleans, Edna has never settled into the selfless maternal mold of the other women who summer at Grand Isle to escape the disease and heat of the city. She begins a journey of self-discovery that leads to several awakenings: to her separateness as a â€Å"solitary soul,† to the pleasures of â€Å"swimming far out† in the seductive sensuously appealing sea, to the passions revealed in music, to her own desire to create art, to a romantic attachment to a young man, to living on her own, to sexual desire. Robert, the beloved, honorably removes himself to escape entanglement; Alcà ©e, a recognized womanizer and rake, elicits the sexual response. Chopin creates a circle of symbolic characters about her heroine: a devoted wife, an embittered spinster musician, a dour and disapproving father, an understanding doctor, empty headed pleasure seekers. Edna veers between realistic apprai sal of her place in the world and romantic longing for Robert, between enjoying the sensual pleasures with Alcà ©e and practically removing herself from her husband’s control.