Showing posts with label Kate Chopin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kate Chopin. Show all posts

The Awakening by Kate Chopin : A Critical Analysis


Reading and comprehending the novel, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin is an inordinately laborious experience, reminding the reader a woman’s education is lacking during this period. The novel demands the mind of the reader to correspond the novel with appropriate grammar while interpolating and interpreting the historical progression of society from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. The theme of the novel concentrates on the marriage and life of a Southern American woman, Edna, who marries a man of a different religion in “violent opposition of her father . . . to her marriage with a Catholic”. The belief is since “. . . the conduct of a woman is subservient to the public opinion, her faith in matters of religion should, for that very reason, be subject to authority”.

Kate Chopin used her writing as a technique to indirectly explicate her life by the means of narrating her stories through the characters she created. Kate Chopin was one of the modern writers of her time, one who wrote novels concentrating on the common social matters related to women. Her time period consisted of other female authors that focused on the same central theme during the era: exposing the unfairness of the patriarchal society, and women’s search for selfhood, and their search for identity. In Chopin’s novel The Awakening, she incorporates the themes mentioned above to illustrate the veracity of life as she understood it. A literary work approached by the feminist critique seeks to raise awareness of the importance and higher qualities of women. Women in literature may uncover their strengths or find their independence, raising their own self recognition. Several critics deem Chopin as one of the leading feminists of her age because she was willing to publish stories that dealt with women becoming self-governing, who stood up for themselves and novels that explored the difficulties that they faced during the time. Chopin scrutinized sole problems and was not frightened to suggest that women desired something that they were not normally permitted to have: independence. Chopin’s decision to focus on and emphasize the imbalances between the sexes is heavily influenced by her upbringing, her feelings towards society, and the era she subsisted in.


How Chopin was raised and educated not only inspired her but it also assisted her with her writing capabilities. On February 8th, 1851 Chopin was born Katherine O’Flaherty, to Thomas O’Flaherty and Eliza O’Flaherty. It is said that Chopin’s father, a businessman from Ireland, proved to be one of her first influences in her life because he happily fortified her attentiveness in writing (3). Unfortunately on November 1st of 1855, her father passed away as a victim to a train accident. Because of his ill-starred death, Kate was fostered by three strong motherly figures: her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. Aside from her father, another big influence in Kate’s life was her great-grandmother. Madame Victoire Verdon Charleville was Kate’s great-grandmother, a figure that possessed a great deal of knowledge who through the art of storytelling paved the way for Kate to learn to be a successful storyteller. Madame Charleville would tell Kate French anecdotes, giving Kate, “…a taste of the culture and freedom allowed by the French that many Americans during this time disapproved of” (3). The themes evident in Chopin’s great grandmother’s stories consisted of women struggling with morality, freedom, convention, and desire. Therefore, Chopin grew up hearing stories of the various struggles women faced in not only her society but that of the one Madame Charleville would constantly tell her stories of. Her stories provided Kate with an idea on what her own stories should incorporate and it also helped influence Chopin’s writing style. As seen in The Awakening, there are moments where the characters will speak in French which conveys that Chopin used what she had learned from her great grandmother to enhance her own stories. Kenneth Eble speaks of Chopin’s “Underground imagination”—“the imaginative life which seems to have gone on from early childhood somewhat beneath and apart from her well-regulated actual existence” (2). This critic is saying that what she was able to depict in her stories originates from what she had grown up knowing and the things she had experienced from her childhood to adulthood. In the novel, The Awakening, there was a quote that described Edna Pontellier, the main character in the book: “Even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life---that outward existence, which conforms, the inward life which questions” (2). Although this quote was used to describe Edna, it also indirectly refers back to the author, Chopin. Chopin had grown to live in her own little world where she understood the orthodoxies within her society and the conflictions that she had questioned.


Through her literary works, Chopin was able to voice her disparaging feelings about the male-controlled social order she lived in. All throughout her novel, The Awakening, there are evident clues expressing the types of views on women in society. In the story, women were portrayed as inferior to men; they wouldn’t have as many opportunities as men were given. People did not suspect women to be smart, or to be independent. This story conveyed that during that time frame, the era Chopin lived in, men were seen as the dominant figure and the women just lived under their roof following their rules.

Chopin expresses her thought on the whole male controlling society in various passages in her novel: “It seems to me the utmost folly for a woman at the head of a household, and the mother of children, to spend in an atelier days which would be better employed contriving for the comfort of her family” (1, pg.77). This quote signifies how society considered women to be, better employed in the house rather than out in society. Women had vital duties to fulfill within their homes mainly taking care of the children as well as maintaining the household while the male figure worked and brought home the money. Women during the time were not able to disobey their husband because society thought of it as wrong; women were to only obey their husbands and submission was the only option.

At some points in the novel Edna never realized that she would heed to Mr. Pontellier’s every commands without even thinking: “She would, through habit, have yielded to his desire; nor with any sense of submission or obedience to his compelling wishes, but unthinkingly, as we walk, move, sit, stand, go through the daily treadmill of the life which has been portioned out to us” (1, pg.42). This quote symbolizes how women were seen during the time. Women were like a doll, controlled by one master: their husband. They had to be obedient to their husbands every compelling wish, without having any thoughts as if it was natural to do so.

Another example in the novel that goes into depth what Chopin thought about women in society is when she was describing the women in her novel. She narrates, “They were women who idolized their children, worshipped their husbands and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels” (1, pg.10). It only goes to show that women were expected to fulfill their obligations as not only a mother but also a wife by fostering the children and “worshipping” their husbands.

Eventually Chopin starts to refer to women becoming more involved in life and striving towards independence in the male dominating society they lived in. Women began to realize their place in the universe as human beings and not just valuable possessions in which men could take control over. This type of realizations is also referenced in the book through the main character, Edna. “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” (1,pg.17). She was beginning to realize where she stood in society and she was starting to recognize who she was as an individual. According to the St. Louis Post- Dispatch Review, Edna, whose spouse has loosely held valued as a bit of decorative furniture, a valuable piece of personal property suddenly becomes aware Edna is a human being (5). This remark explains that Leonce, Edna’s husband starts to fathom that Edna is her own person, not some doll that he can play with and laugh at, at any moment or second of the day.

Another factor that contributes to why Chopin decides to focus on the inequalities among the sexes is because of the era she had lived in. During the 1800s, the time period Chopin lived in, women faced many issues during the time. They had always been beleaguered because they were said to be the inferior sex when compared to men, who were seen as better both mentally, psychologically, and physically. Women had finally woken to realize their social oppression and as a result they became defiant in nature and spirit, rising above the obstacles they faced within society. Women started to rebel because they yearned for sovereignty within the male dominant society they existed in. Authors similar to Chopin wrote to inform people of the important issues for women; they focused on pointing out the unfairness imposed on women. They were able to portray women through their characters, as human beings, as opposed to self-sacrificing and dedicated women, as was expected of women during that era. As said by critic, Seyersted, “Revolting against tradition and authority; with daring which we can hardy fathom today; with an uncompromising honesty and no trace of sensationalism, she undertook to give the unsparing truth about woman’s submerged life” (2). He speaks of Chopin’s recalcitrant nature, an author who acknowledged passion and was not afraid to stand by what was unbiased and what was practical. According to The Kate Chopin International Society, “…most of what has been written about Kate Chopin since 1969 is feminist in nature or is focused on women’s positions in society” (2). Chopin made a great impact during her time because she was able to inform people, her readers of what women had to cope with and the inequitableness of the societal restraints.

She expresses this within the book through the experiences of Edna Pontellier. Edna is depicted as a strong, courageous, daring woman who found that she no longer desired to live by society’s constraints of the time. Edna ends up acting upon her passion and emotions by committing sins so long as it exercises her independence and personal freedom.

The time period she lived in had a great influence on her writing because she was able to show people the underlying issues women faced without directly stating it. She was able to open the eyes of her readers to the facts and the situations occurring during the time. The era provided her with ideas and reasons to write such novels like The Awakening, and with this expressed her emotions and thoughts on life during the period.

Authors like Chopin helped people realize what was going on during the 1800s. They were able to incorporate the thoughts of women, and what duties society expected them to fulfill during the era. Although these authors were criticized because of what they wrote, they were honest with their opinions and outlooks. According to the Los Angeles Sunday Times, Chopin “…wanted to preach the doctrine of the right of the individual to have what he wants, no matter whether or not it may be good for him” (4). The Los Angeles Sunday Times acknowledges that Chopin’s focus was to convey the rights of women no matter how consequential it might be. Kate Chopin’s upbringing, views on society, and the era she lived in are all incorporated in her novel The Awakening, which expresses the inequalities between male and female.

The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin: A Critical Analysis of the Emotional theme

In “The Story of an Hour” (1894), Kate Chopin focuses on a late nineteenth century American woman’s dramatic hour of awakening into selfhood, which enables her to live the last moments of her life with an acute consciousness of life’s immeasurable beauty. Mrs. Mallard, who suffers from a weak heart, seems to live a psychologically torpid and anemic life until she hears the news of her husband’s death. This news comes from her husband’s friend, who says that Brently Mallard has died in a railroad accident. Mrs. Mallard’s sister, Josephine, mindful of Mrs. Mallard’s heart condition, breaks the news to her “in broken sentences” and “veiled hints.” But when Mrs. Mallard hears the shocking news, she undergoes a profound transformation that empowers her with a “clear and exalted perception.” As Chopin demonstrates, this heightened consciousness comes to the protagonist because of her awakened emotions. Revealing her own dynamic and avant-garde understanding, Chopin rejects the tradition of attributing supremacy to the faculty of reason in the act of perception, and she attributes it instead to the faculty of emotions.

When she hears the news of her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard’s obliviousness to the beauty of life breaks down under the powerful impact of emotion. Until this moment, Mrs. Mallard hardly thinks it worthwhile to continue her existence; as the narrator of the story says, “It was only yesterday [Mrs. Mallard] had thought with a shudder that life might be long.” Her life until this point seems devoid of emotion, as the lines in her face “bespeak repression.” Upon hearing the news, her sorrow gushes out in a torrent: “She wept at once with sudden, wild abandonment.” The narrator points out, however, that Mrs. Mallard is not struck, as “many women” have been, by “a paralyzed inability” to accept the painful sense of loss. On the contrary, she is roused from her passivity by an uncontrollable flood of emotion. This “storm” that “haunt[s] her body and seem[s] to reach into her soul” ultimately purges her of the sufferance of a meaningless life, as it becomes the impetus for the revelation that leads to her new freedom.

Until her moment of illumination, Mrs. Mallard’s emotions have been stifled and suppressed to fit into the mold of hollow social conventions. As Chopin implies, Mrs. Mallard’s “heart trouble” is not so much a physical ailment, as the other characters in the story think, as a sign of a woman who has unconsciously surrendered her heart (i.e., her identity as an individual) to the culture of paternalism. This repression has long brewed in the depths of Mrs. Mallard’s heart (emotionally speaking), and it causes her to be generally apathetic toward life. The physiological aspect of Mrs. Mallard’s heart ailment appears to be, then, a result of the psychological burden of allowing another individual’s (i.e., her husband’s) “powerful will” to smother and silence her own will. In the patriarchal world of the nineteenth- century United States that Chopin depicts, a woman was not expected to engage in self-assertion. As Norma Basch observes of the American legal and economic milieu of the period, the patriarchy of that time “mandated the complete dependence of wives on husbands,” making marriage “a form of slavery.” The virtuous wife, in Mrs. Mallard’s world, was the submissive woman who accepts the convention that her husband has “a right to impose a private will” upon her—as Mrs. Mallard realizes has been true of her marriage. So insistent is this artificial life of empty conventions for Mrs. Mallard that it tries to assert itself even after its barriers are broken, as she sits in her room and begins to comprehend the freedom that awaits her as a widow: “She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will.” But the excitement in her heart, which is supposed to be frail, is uncontrollable, and her fear soon transforms into joy. That is, the power of her emotions conquers the force of conventionality.

As she sets aside the world of social conventions, her emotions underscore the individuality that is awakening in her. “This thing” that is approaching her is her consciousness of her own individuality, and she waits for it “fear- fully.” Accompanying it is “a monstrous joy” that highlights the colossal significance of self-discovery at the expense of the hollow conventions that would dismiss her joy as horribly inappropriate and unbecoming. Now, however, joy and hope lead her to an awareness that she has become, as she realizes, “Free! Body and soul free!” Just as she locks herself in her room and locks out her social world, she also locks out social conventions. And thus, purging her repressed emotions, she awakens to all the individual elements of her natural environment: she notices, as she looks out her bed- room window, the trees, the rain, the air, the peddler’s voice, the notes of a song, the sparrows, the sky, and the clouds. Because her emotions are no longer bottled, Louise Mallard attends to “the sounds, the scents, the color” in the natural world, and they teach her of the sounds, the scents, and the color within her own soul. That is, they teach her of the particular combination of attributes within her soul that make her a unique individual. Clearly, her new emotional freedom leads to the awakening of her mind.

Chopin’s investigation of emotion in this story clearly fits R. J. Dolan’s argument that emotion influences not simply attention, but also “pre-attentive processing.” As Chopin shows through Louise, the act of watching nature and engaging in sense perception is the act of processing emotional stimuli: “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air.” These objects inspire joy and hope in her, which, in turn, stir Louise’s attention: “She felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.” The “it” that she feels emerging from nature is the vision, or perception, of her freedom, which occurs through her aroused emotions. The presence of emotion signifies Louise’s sensitivity, responsiveness, and mindfulness.

Indeed, it is not the rational faculty that enables Louise’s discovery of her individuality. As Chopin carefully points out, the coming of consciousness occurs suddenly, spontaneously, intuitively. As Louise looks out her window, her face shows “not a glance of reflection, but rather . . . a suspension of intelligent thought.” The discovery of her individuality is “too subtle and elusive” for the rational faculty to analyze and grasp. It can only be “felt” first with instinct and then with emotions. Alone and unencumbered in her room, Louise spontaneously opens herself to the sublimity and grandeur of the physical world around her, of which she herself is a part.

As Chopin demonstrates through the physical changes in Louise, emotion connects the soul to the body. As her body responds to her emotions, she feels a rhythmic connection to the physical world. As John Deigh defines emotion, it is “a state through which the world engages our thinking and elicits our pleasure or displeasure,” for it is the “turbulence of the mind” that “captures our attention, orients our thoughts, and touches our sensibilities.” Fittingly, Louise’s emotions enable her to feel harmony between her body and soul. According to William James, a psychologist who was a contemporary of Chopin’s, “bodily feelings” are “characteristics” of “various emotional moods.” Fittingly, Chopin underscores Louise’s physical state: “Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously.” At this point Louise’s apparent emotional anemia has given way to healthy blood circulation: “Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.” Indeed, if James argues that “the immediate cause of emotion is a physical effect on the nerves,” Chopin demonstrates that emotion is accompanied by physical changes: Louise’s “coursing blood” reflects her profound joy about her new sense of life’s sacred beauty.

Chopin also shows the influence of Romanticism in her emphasis on the creative role of emotions. As M. H. Abrams argues, for the Romantics, the poet “modifies or transforms the materials of sense”: “objects of sense are fused and remolded in the crucible of emotion and the passionate imagination”. Similarly, Louise’s passion influences her imagination: “Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her”. Evidently, her feelings of curiosity and wonder influence her “fancy,” which here is synonymous with the creative faculty of imagination. But, in using the word “fancy” instead of imagination, Chopin suggests that it is emotions that are prompting the creative work. As Abrams interprets the Romantic viewpoint, “feelings project a light—especially a colored light—on objects of sense.” Stepping beyond the Romantics, not only does Chopin make Louise’s flooding emotions vitalize the landscape, but she also makes the latter’s emotions create a meaningful, purposeful landscape: it symbolizes the stirring, creative, dynamic forces of life.

Further, Chopin uses nature—the objects of sense—as a symbol of the powerful faculty of emotions, which creates design and harmony. Just as spring symbolizes the “new . . . life,” so the natural world symbolizes the vigor and power of Louise’s “wild abandonment,” her passionate outburst. As nature returns to life after winter, so Louise’s emotions return to life after a prolonged winter of patriarchal confinement. Furthermore, just as nature awakens instinctively, so do Louise’s repressed emotions. That is, as nature bursts with energy and vitality, so does Louise’s love of life. Louise’s emotions bring together all the individual elements of the natural world in such a way that they form a new pattern, a unique living picture. Because her husband, the source of her suppressed and repressed emotions, suddenly seems to have disappeared, her bottled emotions gush out to taste freedom just as the world of nature (“the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air”) breaks out spontaneously. And yet her society rejects this natural world of emotions and associates it with illness. Thus Josephine implores, “Louise, open the door . . . you will make yourself ill.” While Chopin associates emotions with sound health, the nineteenth-century patriarchy associates them with ill health. Louise’s responsiveness to the sounds, scents, and color is her excited and intense responsiveness to beauty. To feel life’s beauty, then, is to see the beauty of one’s own life. For to look at the world of nature is to feel life’s innate, spontaneous beauty: “she was drinking in a very elixir of life through the open window.” Indeed, the base metal of her own life is now transformed to invaluable gold because of her “abandonment” to her own nature. As Chopin illustrates through Louise’s sense of freedom, the latter engages in an interpretive act that shows how the individual creates meaning for herself through the faculty of emotions. So profound is this awakening that in that one hour of self-fulfillment, Louise experiences a taste of eternity.

In that one hour, then, Louise sees and creates a new identity with her newly awakened faculty of emotions. Chopin illustrates the role of the emotions in creating the moment of illumination by highlighting the connection between her eyes and her emotions: “The vacant stare and the look of terror . . . went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright.” The awareness that transforms Mrs. Mallard into Louise, the individual, and that makes her “see beyond” the stifling past into a promising future is the product of acute emotions: “There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory.” Louise breaks the shackles of the patriarchal culture as she comprehends that she can “live for herself” instead of living the life that her husband sanctions for her. And this comprehension has to be felt with emotions. Thus Chopin shows how Louise’s faculty of emotions influences her faculty of reason: she now comprehends her “possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being.” As Dolan observes, there is a strong relationship between emotion and cognition: “the growth of emotional awareness informs mechanisms that underwrite the emergence of self-identity and social competence.” Standing confidently at the top of the stairs, the height of which represents Louise’s exalted state, she has reached the zenith of self- awareness.

Thus it is no surprise that Louise suffers an acutely painful—and ultimately fatal—shock when her husband returns home. It turns out that he has missed his train and thus has been spared the accident that otherwise would have killed him. He arrives home and enters through the front door just as Louise, at the end of her “brief moment of illumination,” is making her symbolic descent down the stairs. When she spots her husband, Louise seems to realize in an instant not only that her husband, as a proponent of patriarchal culture, would never allow for a woman’s self-discovery, but also that she could never reverse her progress and once again take up the confinement of her former life. At the sight of her husband she is at once profoundly aware of her newfound freedom and the fact that it will not last. The shock that kills her must, then, be the realization that she has lost this freedom, and with it her human individuality. Her emotions spread through her entire being so profoundly that they lead to another severe physical change, and she dies immediately.

As Chopin demonstrates, then, so powerful is emotion that it enables clarity of perception in Louise. It allows her to perceive life’s immeasurable beauty, without which, as she realizes with the suddenness of acutely shocking pain at the sudden entry of her husband, there is only death: the “joy” that kills Louise is the joy that (unbeknownst to the doctors who ironically assume that it is joy at her husband’s return that kills her) she refuses to surrender, as the patriarchy would require her to do at Brently’s return. But, for one climactic hour of her life, Louise does truly taste joy. For one hour of emotion, Louise does glimpse meaning and fulfillment. To be fully alive, then, is to engage in heightened consciousness, to observe and connect with the world around one’s self. Indeed, Chopin makes clear that to simply observe the world through one’s rational faculty is nowhere near as powerful as observing it with the vibrant, vigorous, acute, and heightened awareness that emotion makes possible.