Edna Pontellier’s Self-discovery in Kate Chopins The Awakening :: Chopin Awakening Essays

Theme of Self-discovery in Kate Chopins The Awakening      Edna Pontlierre experiences a theme of self-discovery throughout the entirenovel of Kate Chopins The Awakening.  indoors Ednas travel through selfdiscovery,  Chopin successfully uses tone, style, and content to help the readerunderstand a person challenging the beliefs of  a na&239ve society at the beginningof the twentieth century.   Chopins style and tone essentially helps the readerunderstand the reputation of Edna and what her surrounding influences are.  Thetone and style also helps the audience understand the relaxation method of the charactersthroughout the novel.  The entire content is relevant to the time frame it waswritten, expressing ideas of the forthcoming feminist movement and creating an assuredness of what was happening to the women of the early nineteenth century.      When The Awakening was maiden published,  its popularity wasnt that ofmodern day.  In fact, it was widely rejected for years.  Within the context, itis considered a very liberal book from the beginning of the nineteenth century.The ideas expressed within the content fill the womens movement and anindividual woman searching for who she really is.  Ross C. Murfin in hiscritical essay  The New Historicism and the Awakening,  shows how Chopin usesthe entity of the hand to relate to both the entire womens unloose and EdnaPontlierres self exploration Chopin uses hands to raise the issues of women, property, self-possession, andvalue.  Women like Adele Ratignolle, represented by their perfectly pale orgloved hands, are signs mainly of their husbands wealth, and therefor of whatStange calls  surplus value.  By insisting on supporting herself with her ownhands through art and having control of her own property the place she movedin to and her inheritance, Edna seeks to come into ownership of a self that ismore than a mere ornament.  She seeks to possess herself (p 197).         Within in the content,  Adele Ratignolle and Mademoiselle representfoils to Edna.  Mademoiselle  represents a single woman that everyone dislikeswho Edna typically confides in.  Adele Ratignolle contrasts Edna because shedutifully plays the genial role of mother-woman.  The reader learns how Ednacontrasts and transcends throughout the entire novel.  From her refusal tosacrifice herself for her children in the beginning of the novel to her movinginto her own house towards the end of the novel,  the reader is effectivelyaware of the realities that face the women of the early twentieth centuryindividually  and as a society.         Chopins style in The Awakening is intended to help the audienceunderstand the character of Edna and the dilemmas that she faces as a married