Motherhood In Kate Chopin's The Awakening
Because of her close relationship with Adèle, Edna learns a great deal about freedom of speech and innovative ways to express herself. This new-found knowledge releases Edna from her previously narrow-minded ways and bottled-up emotions and desires. Edna's sexual and spiritual desires surface distinguishing a separation between her pursuit of happiness and her responsibilities as a mother and wife. Because she feels like she is so burdened, she does anything she can to attain freedom, and to her, it doesn’t matter if she is sinful and goes against her Creole upbringing to get there. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna fights against the societal and instinctive structures of motherhood that coerce her to be defined by her title as wife of
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Leonce Pontellier and mother of Raoul and Etienne Pontellier, instead of being her own, individual self.
In the turn-of-the-century Creole New Orleans, women closely held many cultural limitations felt during the time of Queen Victoria's reign. In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, women felt imprisoned within a male-controlled society exposing the promises of having to live up to well-enforced standards of their society, which exemplified the corruption and twisted viewpoints of the post-Victorian era. Society dictated that Creole women behave in an expected manner. They needed to be honorable, direct and unreserved in their interactions with their personal lives as well as in their societal ranking. These concepts varied greatly from the Georgian era. The morals of this Victorian time frame were described as ones that valued extreme purity, sexual abstinence, did not tolerate crime of any kind, and adhered to a very strict code of conduct. These moral values caused such a monumental social upheaval that women began to disregard their part in their role in society. In America during this same time frame, the feminist movement was just getting started yet was almost nonexistent in the conservative state of Louisiana. In this moral hierarchy, a woman was still considered the property of her husband. It’s important to note that at the end of the 19th century, “mother-women” achieved independence and the move towards moral equality began. Chopin describes this as,
The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle.
It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels. (1259)
This celebrated the end of the “mother-woman” ideology made way for the movement towards the “New Woman.” The “New Woman” could take on the same meaning as the “New Negro” because women were no longer viewed as the gender in society that were of lesser value than men and were clearly demonstrating their ability to become self-sufficient.
Throughout The Awakening by Kate Chopin, the more profound meaning of the novel is discovered through a number of important symbols. These symbolic elements help establish the connection between Edna’s world and her eventual awakening. Chopin illustrates,
In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight—perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any
woman.
But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!
The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace. (1263)
Leonce Pontellier and mother of Raoul and Etienne Pontellier, instead of being her own, individual self.
In the turn-of-the-century Creole New Orleans, women closely held many cultural limitations felt during the time of Queen Victoria's reign. In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, women felt imprisoned within a male-controlled society exposing the promises of having to live up to well-enforced standards of their society, which exemplified the corruption and twisted viewpoints of the post-Victorian era. Society dictated that Creole women behave in an expected manner. They needed to be honorable, direct and unreserved in their interactions with their personal lives as well as in their societal ranking. These concepts varied greatly from the Georgian era. The morals of this Victorian time frame were described as ones that valued extreme purity, sexual abstinence, did not tolerate crime of any kind, and adhered to a very strict code of conduct. These moral values caused such a monumental social upheaval that women began to disregard their part in their role in society. In America during this same time frame, the feminist movement was just getting started yet was almost nonexistent in the conservative state of Louisiana. In this moral hierarchy, a woman was still considered the property of her husband. It’s important to note that at the end of the 19th century, “mother-women” achieved independence and the move towards moral equality began. Chopin describes this as,
The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle.
It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels. (1259)
This celebrated the end of the “mother-woman” ideology made way for the movement towards the “New Woman.” The “New Woman” could take on the same meaning as the “New Negro” because women were no longer viewed as the gender in society that were of lesser value than men and were clearly demonstrating their ability to become self-sufficient.
Throughout The Awakening by Kate Chopin, the more profound meaning of the novel is discovered through a number of important symbols. These symbolic elements help establish the connection between Edna’s world and her eventual awakening. Chopin illustrates,
In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight—perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any
woman.
But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!
The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace. (1263)