Water Motif as a Means to an End for Chopin’s Character Essay

Edna Pontellier can be Chopin’s primary female protagonist in “The Awakening”. The usage of water being a dominant mark in the book will be dissected from this essay, and also Edna’s freedom throughout the novel which is a representation of her failing marital life, and how her final take action of self-reliance and personal identity is done through water which releases her from the bonds of your patriarch society and by extendable her marriage with her husand.

Edna Pontellier, the main character of “The Awakening” is limited simply by her category location; even so she breaks it and behaves because an independent female. The author implies that to ‘woman’s mission’ is to offer culture the benefits of the domestic unit: to link the gulf of mexico between the two classes of rich and poor, to per¬form kindnesses which would transform mutinous senti¬ments in to grateful types, and to refashion the lower instructions in the image of their improves. But these objectives con¬tained various contradictory factors.

As the most essential, the female writers represent the social category as a great “iron cage” for women. The authors represent that every thing depends upon course location of the personas: their social life, riches and value which is a expression of who have they marry. For instance, Kate Chopin underlines that placement of Leonce Pontellier is definitely closely linked with the idea that business shapes a male. For instance, when Edna chooses to leave him “he was not longing to behold scandal.

Having been simply considering his monetary integrity” (Chopin, 1995). As a result, it does not seem to be that romance is a section of the marriage among these two personas. Edna’s arising begins with Adele Ratignolle. Taking into account upper class values, it was impossible to get a woman to have physical desire and wishing. Edna’s 1st attraction to Adele can be physical: ‘the excessive physical charm in the Creole experienced first drawn her, pertaining to Edna a new sensuous susceptibility to beauty’ (Chopin, 1995).

It is not a romantic take pleasure in which appeals to Edna to Adele nevertheless a more physical desire. Edna seems fated to reenact social rituals, even though, because Chopin recounts these displays, she satirizes and revises their exhibitions. Ironically, looking at her determi¬nation to discard the trappings of her role like a society matron her wedding ring, her ‘reception day’, her ‘charming home’ the large point of Edna’s waking up is the dinner party she gives for her twenty-ninth birthday. Edna thinks of her matrimony as a blunder, the text makes it clear that Edna provides married her husband, generally because he was handsome and differed significantly from other men.

Taking into account this case, symbolically, the author depicts that marriage and social category become a jail for Edna which prevents her to have equal placement and equivalent rights with men. Edna wants to have the same rights as men have and be equal with them. The lady seems to have thought that men and women as well have great difficulty reconciling their need to live while discrete persons.

These inconsistant needs lay at the center in the story. In sum, the author depicts that class situation had a superb influence on every aspect of your life: economic and social. Top classes can be economically impartial which means that they can speak all their mind and it would not cost these people any¬thing in the event that they offended someone (Baldridge, 158).

Chopin depicts progression of soul and will from the female character types. The development of the characters displays inner internal state from the heroines helping readers to seize the idea at the same time, to follow plan development and conflict resolution. The evolution and changing part of women is definitely forced simply by inner have difficulty and great desire to be free from social best practice rules and bias. The changing role to get Edna, as depicted in “The Awakening” is witnessed through her final act of committing suicide, or a great act that is certainly completely contrived by her, and carried out by her; thus, independence, full self-reliance from any individual.

It is water that is the catalyst in this case, and it is water which will purifies Edna at the end in the story, and baptizes her into her true home, and rids her of all the so-called contrary naturel shoved on to her by simply her husband and contemporary society. Thus, the symbol of water functions in the story as a gadget which allows Edna a full identity, away from marital life and loving love. Function Cited Baldridge, J. Victor. Sociology: A Critical Approach to Power, Conflict, and Change. John Wiley & Kids, Inc.

75. Chopin, E. The Awakening. 1995. 2007.Pontuale, F. Kate Chopin: A report of the Short Fiction. The Mississippi Quarterly. Vol. 52. 1998.

Simons, K. Kate Chopin within the Nature of Things. The Mississippi Quarterly Vol. 51. 1998.