Sexuality In Kate Chopin's The Awakening
Edna: The “Other” Woman
“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.” John O’Donohue, an Irish writer, priest, and philosopher, wrote this in Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom. It fully encompasses how Edna Pontellier, the main character, felt in Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening. Published in 1899, this time period did not give Edna the same chance the women of the early 20th century had. Instead she plays the role of the …show more content…
Female sexuality was being redefined by writers in the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Dale Bauer asks in her book, Sex Expression and American Women Writers, 1860-1940, “How much could American society regulate the norms of sexuality for its female sexual citizens?” She talks about the way female writers were creating a new way that women could be seen as sexual beings. There were plenty of people in America trying to do the opposite, to keep women from being sexually free. It is seen in The Awakening that Edna is making this transition into sexual freedom whether society likes it or not. At Grand Isle where all the Creoles stayed, Edna had met Robert Lebrun who was the first man Edna had felt something with since she had been with her husband. For many weeks he had flirted with her, even to the point where she felt he was being too forward. It was not given a second thought because he flirted with most women on Grand Isle at one point or another and was seen as harmless. Having just experienced her awakening at the beach, Edna and Robert went back to where the houses were and she got onto one of the
“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.” John O’Donohue, an Irish writer, priest, and philosopher, wrote this in Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom. It fully encompasses how Edna Pontellier, the main character, felt in Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening. Published in 1899, this time period did not give Edna the same chance the women of the early 20th century had. Instead she plays the role of the …show more content…
Female sexuality was being redefined by writers in the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Dale Bauer asks in her book, Sex Expression and American Women Writers, 1860-1940, “How much could American society regulate the norms of sexuality for its female sexual citizens?” She talks about the way female writers were creating a new way that women could be seen as sexual beings. There were plenty of people in America trying to do the opposite, to keep women from being sexually free. It is seen in The Awakening that Edna is making this transition into sexual freedom whether society likes it or not. At Grand Isle where all the Creoles stayed, Edna had met Robert Lebrun who was the first man Edna had felt something with since she had been with her husband. For many weeks he had flirted with her, even to the point where she felt he was being too forward. It was not given a second thought because he flirted with most women on Grand Isle at one point or another and was seen as harmless. Having just experienced her awakening at the beach, Edna and Robert went back to where the houses were and she got onto one of the