The Awakening Essay -- essays research papers

The Awakening opens in the late 1800s in one thousand Isle, a pass holiday resort popular with the wealthy inhabitants of nigh New siege of Orleans. Edna Pontellier is vacationing with her keep up, Lonce, and their two sons at the cottages of Madame Lebrun, which house enough Creoles from the French Quarter. Lonce is kind and loving but control with his work. His frequent business-related absences mar his domestic life with Edna. Consequently, Edna pretermits approximately of her time with her peer Adle Ratignolle, a married Creole who epitomizes womanly refinement and charm. Through her relationship with Adle, Edna learns a great deal to the highest degree freedom of expression. Because Creole women were expected and assumed to be chaste, they could behave in a forthright and unreserved manner. Exposure to such openness liberates Edna from her antecedently prudish behavior and repressed emotions and desires.Ednas relationship with Adle begins Ednas process of awakening an d self-discovery, which constitutes the focus of the book. The process accelerates as Edna comes to make love Robert Lebrun, the elder, single son of Madame Lebrun. Robert is known among the Grand Isle vacationers as a man who chooses one woman each yearoften a married womanto whom he then plays attendant all summer long. This summer, he devotes himself to Edna, and the two spend their days together lounging and talking by the shore. Adle Ratignolle often accompanies them.At first, the relationship mingled with Robert and Edna is innocent. They broadly bathe in the sea or engage in low-cal talk. As the summer progresses, however, Edna and Robert grow closer, and Roberts affections and attention inspire in Edna several internal revelations. She feels more alive than ever before, and she starts to paint over again as she did in her youth. She also learns to swim and becomes aware of her independence and sexuality. Edna and Robert neer openly discuss their love for one another, b ut the time they spend alone together kindles memories in Edna of the dreams and desires of her youth. She becomes inexplicably depressed at night with her husband and profoundly joyful during her moments of freedom, whether alone or with Robert. Recognizing how intense the relationship between him and Edna has become, Robert honorably removes himself from Grand Isle to avoid consummating his forbidden love. Edna returns to New Orleans a changed woman.Ba... ...worried about the outcome of her passionate but confused actions. already reeling under the weight of Adles admonition, Edna begins to perceive herself as having acted selfishly.Edna returns to her house to interpret Robert gone, a note of farewell left in his place. Roberts inability to escape the ties of society now prompts Ednas most devastating awakening. Haunted by thoughts of her children and realizing that she would have change surfacetually found even Robert unable to fulfill her desires and dreams, Edna feels an ov erwhelming sense of solitude. Alone in a world in which she has found no feeling of belonging, she can find only one answer to the inescapable and heartbreaking limitations of society. She returns to Grand Isle, the position of her first moments of emotional, sexual, and intellectual awareness, and, in a final escape, gives herself to the sea. As she swims with the soft, embracing water, she thinks about her freedom from her husband and children, as well as Roberts failure to understand her, Doctor Mandelets words of wisdom, and white perch Reiszs courage. The text leaves open the question of whether the suicide constitutes a poor-spirited surrender or a liberating triumph.