Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening'

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For Honors English, we're required to write essay responses to questions given about this book.
She's given us four 'questions', and three of them are relatively easy. I've read the book and re-read parts of it. I have a pretty good understanding of the book, and actually did like it quite a bit.

BUT, this one question is giving me some problems. I have some general ideas on how to respond to it, but I think I need to be more indepth in my response.

I'm not asking anyone to write this essay for me. I just need some direction.

The question:
Why does Edna ultimately reject the lifestyles of Adele and of Madame Reisz? Explain the 2 women and their roles, then Edna's rejection and reasons.

The main part I'm having a problem with is the part dealing with the roles the women play. I don't know if I just read over where it implied what their roles were or what, but I did catch a bit of "motherlyness" from someone. I may have to re-re-read some parts of the book.

Other than that, I could write forever on this question.




So, has anybody even read this book? Any guidance is greatly appreciated.

[warbeak2099]

Ugh, I was all ready to help you and then I realized I've only read short stories by Chopin. As for the question, you're definitely going to have to understand the feelings and outward actions of the characters. Really analyze how they act and speak. You should be able to form an idea of what kind of people they are. A great excercise is studying the characters and coming up with an outside situation to put them in. Think about how they would act in it or deal with it. Bottomline, you need to be able to read into things. The role of a character in this case is social. Think about the social roles that the women portray. Here are some starters:

Are they traditional, subservient women?
Are they radical, independent women?
Do they bend to society's demands?

Yadda yadda yadda. That's all I can say without reading the novel. Chopin writes some great stuff, but I just never read any of her novels.

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Are they traditional, subservient women?
Are they radical, independent women?
Do they bend to society's demands?

That helped A LOT. I'm not sure why I didn't come up with that. I think I've got this thing nailed now.

Thanks a bunch!!

[warbeak2099]

No problem. Just typical topics covered by Chopin.

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No problem. Just typical topics covered by Chopin.

True that. Some of her writings are a bit...different; good, but different.

[tropical_fishy]

I can normally help w/this kind of stuff, but I hated this sad and pathetic excuse for a feminist novel. Although I liked the part where she drowned herself at the end.

I disliked Chopin for her obnoxious symbolism. For God's sake, how many times do we have to hear "women= [caged] birds" to get it? I hate being bashed over the head with symbols.

Sorry. Chopin and Dickens are two writers that I hate.

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I can normally help w/this kind of stuff, but I hated this sad and pathetic excuse for a feminist novel. Although I liked the part where she drowned herself at the end.

I disliked Chopin for her obnoxious symbolism. For God's sake, how many times do we have to hear "women= [caged] birds" to get it? I hate being bashed over the head with symbols.

Sorry. Chopin and Dickens are two writers that I hate.

I can see where you're coming from, and I did actually get really annoyed at some points while reading it, but it was an OK book - just not anything I would recommend.

And I totally agree with you on Dickens.

[tropical_fishy]

I can see where you're coming from, and I did actually get really annoyed at some points while reading it, but it was an OK book - just not anything I would recommend.

And I totally agree with you on Dickens.

Dickens is awful. He takes these GREAT plots-- like the one for Bleak House, for example, but even Great Expectations or A Tale of Two Cities and just kills them. Instead of talking about the action, he describes the f-ing fog for and ENTIRE CHAPTER. "And there was fog on the road. And on the buildings. And all of London was covered in fog. And the horses couldn't see because of the fog. And the fog was so thick it was like smoke. And there was fog in the road..." And then, in the course of ONE paragraph, your favorite character (who has, by this time, served his only purpose to the plot) goes and vaguely spontaneously combusts. This is no joke, in fact. In Bleak House, one of the characters literally spontaneously combusts. But instead of describing that, the stupid characters are off examining the yellow sludge that is, inexplicably, dripping onto the windowsill, and is never mentioned again. I think that's my biggest pet peeve between Chopin and Dickens-- they introduce characters and objects, then, once they've served their purpose, they are never mentioned again. Ok, I'm done ranting about Dickens.

[MarkM]

Whilst Dickens can be heavy going you have to understand the time at which those books were written, there wasn't the media we have now in fact the media that was around when I grew up is scarily old fashioned already. It was an escape to another place and as such needed the descriptions. I tried to read 'Gone with the Wind' and that was immensely hard going because of the descriptions (though not quite as heavy as Dickens) books today tend to be just books not the Novels that they were in Dickens era. The social class of person who was able to read Dickens had a lot to do with their construction (even if the subject matter was often the more seedier side of things) but then often the seedier side is what attracts.

[warbeak2099]

Exactly right. I really like Dicken's work. His use of imagery is not a fault, it's a strength. I thought Great Expectations was quite good. Besides, when you take that quote out of context it is pretty bland. But in the context of the novel, it contains symbolism and meaning. The language in that particular passage is emphasing a dark, bleak mood. It worked too, you certainly noticed it didn't you?

[tropical_fishy]

Exactly right. I really like Dicken's work. His use of imagery is not a fault, it's a strength. I thought Great Expectations was quite good. Besides, when you take that quote out of context it is pretty bland. But in the context of the novel, it contains symbolism and meaning. The language in that particular passage is emphasing a dark, bleak mood. It worked too, you certainly noticed it didn't you?

I wish I had my book here, but it's back in CT. Of course I noticed. How could I NOT notice, it was an entire chapter of nothing adn then a paragraph of kind-of-something.

Symbolism, to me, should not be something that the reader picks up on the first, or even the second time reading the novel. It should be subtle. Dickens' symbolism is anything but-- but I understand that. He had to keep readers reading because of the installment style of publication. It's still frustrating to read, for me, because I despise the way his narrator speaks, especially in Bleak House. I find his characters to be one-dimensional much like Tolkien's. When he's done with them, he kills them off, and that's extremely frustrating as well.

Oh, and for those who haven't read this book, here's part of the "fog" chapter I was talking about:

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls deified among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time--as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

I understand why Dickens wrote like he did. I've studied his work multiple times, but he is one of the few writers that just rub me the wrong way (much like Chopin).

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Symbolism, to me, should not be something that the reader picks up on the first, or even the second time reading the novel. It should be subtle. Dickens' symbolism is anything but-- but I understand that. He had to keep readers reading because of the installment style of publication. It's still frustrating to read, for me, because I despise the way his narrator speaks, especially in Bleak House. I find his characters to be one-dimensional much like Tolkien's. When he's done with them, he kills them off, and that's extremely frustrating as well.

I'll agree with you again on this. Overly-strong symbolism makes me feel like I'm reading a children's book. I really dislike it.
I actually like having to think about what I'm reading.

But, I'll disagree with you on 'A Tale of Two Cities.' I haven't read a lot of Dickens' work, but I did like this one. Sure, some of it I disliked, but I'll never find a book that's actually been, well, perfect.

[Archangel Kid]

I hated this sad and pathetic excuse for a feminist novel. Although I liked the part where she drowned herself at the end.

QFT.

On a helping note, go watch Grand Isle, it's almost exactly the book in movie form. Either way when you're done watching/reading it you're going to want to shoot yourself.

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QFT.

On a helping note, go watch Grand Isle, it's almost exactly the book in movie form. Either way when you're done watching/reading it you're going to want to shoot yourself.

I finished reading it long ago. I even re-read quite a bit of it. It wasn't that bad.

[Archangel Kid]

It wasn't that bad.

Yes it was.