Saturday, October 26, 2019
Dealing with Society Edna Pontelliers Battle with Social Class Essay
Dealing with Society Edna Pontelliers Battle with Social Class Edna Pontellier, the main character in Kate Chopinââ¬â¢s novel The Awakening, is a woman trying to form her own identity, both feminine and sexually, in the repressive and Victorian Creole world of the latter nineteenth century. She is met by a counterpart, Mademoiselle Reisz, who is able to live freely as a woman. Edna herself was denied this freedom because of the respectable societal position she had been married into and because of her Presbyterian up bringing as a child. The role that Mademoiselle Reisz played within society, a society that failed to view her as being a truly respectable social member, was quite opposite to that of Ednaââ¬â¢s respectable position in society. Edna was ordained in the Presbyterian ways as she became an adult in Kentucky and Mississippi (Companion 123); as one critic put it, she was of ââ¬Å"solid old Presbyterian Kentucky stockâ⬠(Petry 58). Edna was raised in a truly ââ¬Å"restricted Victorianâ⬠(Nikerson) manner to be ââ¬Å"an American womanâ⬠¦with a graceful severity of poise and movementâ⬠(Companion 123). To understand the social order she was born into you have to look at the Presbyterian background she grew up in. Presbyterianism took the view that women were ââ¬Å"regarded as equal to menâ⬠¦[but women were] the weaker vesselâ⬠¦and should become subordinate to the husbandâ⬠(Wolff 2). In broader terms, this is saying that women are equal, but are still below men in society. This construct was reinforced by the fact that ââ¬Å"married women in Louisianaâ⬠¦[, in Ednaââ¬â¢s time,] were legal property of their husbandsâ⬠(Chopin 121). By a broad range, women of high V ictorian society were greatly scrutinized if they tried to step out of any of the normal set boun... ...ction. Westport, Greenwood Press Inc., 1988 Chopin, Kate and Cully Margo, Ed. The Awakening: A Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton & Comp., 1994. Mahon, Robert Lee. ââ¬Å"Beyond the love triangle: trios in ââ¬Å"The Awakening.â⬠The Midwest Quarterly 39.2 (1998) : 228-236. McCoy, Thorunn Ruga. ââ¬Å"Chopinââ¬â¢s ââ¬ËThe Awakening.ââ¬â¢Ã¢â¬ The Explicator 56.1 (1997): 27-26 InfroTrac SearchBank. Online. 30 Nov. 1998. Nickerson, Megan. ââ¬Å"Romanticism in The Awakening.â⬠Online. 29 Nov. 1998 Petry, Alice. Critical Essays on Kate Chopin. Printice Hall International., 1996 Thorton, Lawrence. ââ¬Å"The Awakening: A Political Romance.â⬠American Literature 52 (1980): 50-66. Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. ââ¬Å"Un-utterable longing: the discourse of feminine sexuality in ââ¬ËThe Awakening.ââ¬â¢Ã¢â¬ Studies in American Fiction 24.1 (1996): 3-23. InfroTrac SearchBank. Online. 30 Nov. 1998.
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